Monday, June 30, 2008

.xls is not a valid Win32 application with Windows Vista SP1

Annoying little problem I've been having with my office applications for a few weeks. At various times, I would try to open an Excel or word document and I would get the error:

"% is not a valid Win32 Application" or "This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action..."

The only thing I knew for sure was that it would happen during the times I would hibernate my computer. (I hibernate my computer in the evening most of the time)

The actual problem turned out to be a Vista bug with running certain applications for a long period of time. Although not directly related to hibernate, by working all day and then hibernating my computer I was effectively leaving my computer running for a long period of time.

This is a known problem and it has been fixed with a Reliability update from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=952709