AppV 5.1, Server 2022 RDS, Office 2024 LTSC issues

Question

Hi, we've been using AppV 5.1 for years now, and I can safely state we are pretty well informed about it. It's going to be EOL relatively soon, but as MSIX is severely lacking for us, mainly because we can't package Office addins with it, we'll be forced to keep using AppV in the foreseeing future.

I have several environments, all with Office installed locally. I'll concentrate on two test-environments, of which I can always revert to a clean state. Both of them are Server 2022, RDS role, AppV enabled. Identical installations, except one has Office 2021 LTSC, one has Office 2024 LTSC. Both are the latest versions as of yet.

Office 2021 16.0.14332.20824

Office 2024 Version 2408 Build 16.0.17932.20222

We have some environments were AppV is used to deploy Office AddIns. Until Office 2021 that worked perfectly fine, but with Office 2024 we have issues with that. Office is installed locally, it's not AppV'ed in any way. With Office 2019+ we use the AllowJitvInAppvVirtualizedProcess registry key. With that, AppV still rocks pretty much everything we throuw at it.

To get Office addons to work, we use the HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\AppV\Client\RunVirtual to pull Office into the AppV bubble, and allow it to use AppV'ed addons. As said, this works perfectly fine up until Office 2021. When we use RunVirtual to pull Office 2024 into AppV, we get random issues. Once in 10-20 times we start an Office app, it just won't start. The splash screen will mostly show, but will then just quit and the process is gone. When we then restart the application, you'll usually get the 'do you want to start in safe mode' message.

The same happens in Outlook, which would then be running inside the AppV bubble. When we open a PDF from a mail, Adobe Reader (installed locally) will start. But once in 10-20 times as well, it will crash out too. As soon as we remove the RunVirtual registry values, so Office is not running inside AppV anymore, it does not crash anymore. But obviously we can't used virtualized Addons anymore, which is key for us.

Needless to say, this all confuses and frustrates our users.

I've been looking with Procmon to find something, but the issue is that it is not reproducable at will. Well it IS somewhat reproducable by for example just starting and closing Word 20 times, it's bound to fail at least once. But it's a hassle to get traces.

I bet we are not alone in still using AppV, as MSIX is simply not there yet, let alone for RDS environments. Are others seeing issues in combination with Office 2024? How to troubleshoot this?

Answer 1

Hi @Robert Gijsen

Based on your description, I recommend gathering information and providing feedback to Microsoft regarding this issue. This issue may require the Office development team to investigate the virtualization performance of Office LTSC 2024 under certain circumstances.

To do this, please open any Office 2024 application and navigate to Help > Feedback, you can attach relevant screenshots and provide specific details.

If you are in a hurry and conditions permit, you can also open a ticket with Microsoft phone support. They will review your issue, remotely your machine, assist you in collecting the necessary information for troubleshooting.

Thanks for your understanding.

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