I've been having random issues with OpenOffice hanging, on two machines, with no hardware/software changes.
Since it's been very stable, I kinda thought there had to be a simple solution, and found it!
Basically I had printed a document using a Network Printer that wasn't my Default Printer.
Printer was off the next time I opened any OpenOffice App, and the response was the same - grey screen, hanging...
Since this was the only change made, I turned the printer on and tada! Apps work as normal.
TLDR - Windows 11 has a setting "Allow Windows to manager my default printer" - which basically changes the default to the last printer used. This is *bad* if that printer happens to be used infrequently. When first opened, Open Office seems to try to communicate with this offline printer, leading to the hang.
My solution - turn off that setting, and set a default printer to "Microsoft XPS Document Writer". which is always available (if the XPS feature is installed of course
)I nearly uninstalled due to this, but the fact it happened on a couple of machine at the same time, led to a possible simple solution!
Hope this helps
Mr Freeze
