LibreOffice + Java 7 = BEX

Just upgraded from LibreOffice 3.4.1 for Windows to 3.5.0 and it kept crashing during the splash screen with a buffer overflow exception (BEX) in msvcr90.dll.

Turns out the culprit is Java Runtime 7. For whatever reason LibreOffice doesn’t detect the JRE 7 during setup/startup.

On a clean install it would complain about Java missing, but with old config files it seems to do things it shouldn’t be doing. I didn’t feel like digging deeper into this, because the fix is quite simple. Let the devs figure this one out 🙂

To fix the crashes

1. Delete the whole folder: C:\Users\{USER}\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice
2. Run LibreOffice, it will complain a few times about Java missing (you might have to start it twice as it shuts down the first time around)
3. Go to Settings > LibreOffice > Java and manually add the path to the installed JRE (usually C:\Program Files\Java\jre7).