I have an add-in for MS Word. One of my users, who is on Word 2007, reports that the add-in is not being loaded. When she checks the COM add-ins list, it says "Load Behavior" is "Unloaded; Load at Startup" (value of 2 in LoadBehavior registry entry).
Yet when she checks the add-in's registry entry, LoadBehavior is set to 3 (Loaded; Load at Startup). The add-in is also not loaded at all.
Is there some reason for the discrepancy between what Word is reporting for the add-in, and what's in the registry, and is there a way to resolve it?
I have a hunch that Word has set a LoadBehavior value somewhere else on her system after the add-in crashed, but she is remote from me, and doesn't want me to remote control her computer to check myself.
Edit: Some additional info: if the user runs a macro to check my add-in in Application.COMAddins, Connect is set to False. However, updating this to True doesn't seem to have any effect. The property will stay True as long as Word is running, but if Word is restarted then it will revert to False (and the add-in is never loaded).
More information: The add-in had been disabled due to a crash, and put in the disabled add-ins list. The user enabled the add-in from the COM add-ins drop-down list, but the load behavior was then stuck on 2, despite the registry value being 3. WinWord.exe doesn't have any compatibility settings.
Also, I provide three add-ins: one for Word, one for Excel, and one for PowerPoint. The Excel and PowerPoint add-ins work fine on the user's computer. I test the add-in myself on XP, Vista, and 7 (32 and 64 bit). The user is on Vista 32 bit.
The Word add-in was working on the user's computer for about two years, but after a crash it was disabled, and the LoadBehavior was stuck on 2. The user actually tried uninstalling and reinstalling Office, but that didn't change the behavior.
Solution
0xA3's solution wasn't complete, but on the right track. It turns out that the user had installed a new antivirus program, which was disabling the add-in (silently! ::insert rant about overzealous AV::).
I also learned a valuable lesson: to some users, "Have you installed any new software" doesn't include antivirus programs. I'll have to change that question to, "Have you installed any new software, or any antivirus programs?"
As said by Otaku, the problem seems to be that the add-in cannot be loaded and therefore is disconnected. It might due be an incomplete/corrupt installation of the add-in, a missing dependency or incorrect/missing registration of a COM component.
It's hard to give you more concrete tips, but here is a list of trouble-shooting tools that you might want to use during Word startup:
DebugView from Sysinternals, run as Administrator, with Capture Global and Capture Kernel enabled.
fuslogvw.exe to check for missing assemblies (assuming your add-in is written in .NET)
DependencyWalker to see for missing native dlls
Process Monitor to check for missing files/registry entries
Is there some reason for the discrepancy between what Word is reporting for the add-in, and what's in the registry, and is there a way to resolve it?
The reason for the discrepancy between the Registry and the actual Word setting is most likely that the current add-in state (loaded, but disconnected) is not stored in the Registry at all because the user has insufficient permissions to change the HKLM Registry key. The LoadBehavior remains 3 in the Registry, and on next Word startup Word will try again to load and connect the add-in.