Request for Support – OLEDB Object Issue in Blue Prism

[mikenbk02]

Hi,

We’re currently facing an issue with the DATA - OLEDB Object in Blue Prism and would appreciate your insights.

Scenario:

The process is designed to open an Excel file and retrieve data using OLEDB for further processing.

Process Sequence:

1. Set Connection

2. Open ← This is where the issue occurs.

   • No exception is thrown by Blue Prism.
   • The process enters a warning state in the Control Room and remains there indefinitely.
   • No error messages are logged in the Windows Event Viewer.
   • The issue occurs randomly and does not happen during development or debug mode.

3. Get Collection

4. Close

Additional Observations:

• The first attempt triggered via the scheduler completes successfully, although we’ve noticed it takes a considerable amount of time to close the connection.
• On the second attempt, the process hangs at the 'Open' stage, without progressing further.

If you’ve encountered this behavior before or have any recommendations on how to resolve it, your guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Owens1J]

You're definitely not the only one! We’ve been seeing the exact same issue since yesterday - automations that were working perfectly just started failing when trying to attach to the “Save As” dialog in Chrome. It works for the first few cases, then breaks consistently unless we reboot the machine. We’ve spent most of the day troubleshooting and haven’t made progress yet.

Would love to hear if you find a workaround or any insight from Blue Prism. 

[Michael_S]

Hi all, checked in with support with this one - just to say we're aware of this issue and are investigating. I'll share updates when I get them, but I recommend that if you're impacted by this that you raise a ticket: https://support.blueprism.com/ 

[Michael_S]

Hi all, just a small update to say that we're continuing to investigate this issue, including liaising with Microsoft to determine the exact cause. Our engineers are keeping me updated so I'll continue to share news as it arrives.

[Michael_S · Accepted solution]

Hi all, we've created an article to track this issue and updates. Find it here:

https://support.blueprism.com/en/support/solutions/articles/7000094939-why-is-the-runtime-resource-automate-exe-crashing-while-interacting-with-oledb-connections-when-using-blue-prism-enterprise-

If you are impacted, please be sure to raise a ticket with support and include:

1. A description of the general issue, for example:
   - Whether you are able to reproduce the issue on demand.
   - Steps on how you are able to reproduce the issue.
   - When the issue first occurred, if it coincided with any change/update within the environment - especially any Windows updates/hotfixes.
   - Screenshots and text copies of any error messages seen when the issue occurred.
   - Steps on how you are able to reproduce the issue.
   
   
2. Details on how you are using OLEDB, and if relevant the version of Microsoft Office in use.
   
   
3. The following Windows event logs, taken from a machine where the crash occurred:
   Windows Logs > Application
   Windows Logs > System
   
   Further details on how to gather these can be found here.
   
   
4. Output from the BPDiagnostics utility - instructions on how to generate this can be found here.
   
   
5. Session logs for the process that was running at the time of the crash. Details on how to gather these can be found here.

Thank you!

[mikenbk02]

It was identified that the bitness of the BluePrism application (32 bit), and the bitness of Office 365 products (64 bit) was not matching.

While there was no concrete answer to if that was causing the issue, the support team from Microsoft recommended addressing that mismatch and testing.

It is important to note that it was never matching, and OLEDB component has been in use by RPA since at least 2021 with no reported issue.

Resolution:
As recommended by Microsoft, Office products were re-installed as 32 bit to match with the BluePrism application, so far we did not see the issue again and it seems to have resolved.

[Neel1]

@Michael_S  - Do we have any article write up for Save as Chrome issue as well.

[ewilson]

FWIW, the Data - OLEDB VBO use to leverage the Microsoft JET provider, which is 32-bit only. When real 64-bit Blue Prism was released (v7.whatever), we changed the OLEDB VBO to default to using the ACE provider which supports 32-bit & 64-bit.

Cheers,
Eric