Sorry, something went wrong and Word was unable to start. (24)
Started getting errors when previewing Office documents in Explorer preview pane. When selecting a Word document and waiting for the preview to appear, we’d get this:
Sorry, something went wrong and Word was unable to start. (24)
Excel docs also had an error but it consisted of a dialog with a red exclamation point.
All of the machines this happened on all originally had 64-bit Office 2013 before it was uninstalled and replaced with 32-bit Office 2013 because of compatibility issues with a required plug-in.
In trying to figure this out, various uninstall/reinstall methods were used but nothing made a difference until I fired up procmon and used it to make comparisons with a working machine.
On a system that only ever had 32-bit Office 2013, the following key existed:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{84F66100-FF7C-4fb4-B0C0-02CD7FB668FE}
On a system with 64-bit Office this key also existed
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{84F66100-FF7C-4fb4-B0C0-02CD7FB668FE}
The 32-bit key contained information while the 64-bit key was empty.
As soon as that HKLM key was renamed(eventually deleted), everything worked again – didn’t even need to restart or log out.
It seems like the Office uninstaller might be forgetting this key when it does its thing.
Hope this helps some people
More:
To fix these errors and repair the preview pane, run Regedit as administrator and delete these registry keys:
Microsoft Excel previewer:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{00020827-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
Microsoft PowerPoint previewer:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{65235197-874B-4A07-BDC5-E65EA825B718}
Microsoft Word previewer:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{84F66100-FF7C-4fb4-B0C0-02CD7FB668FE}
Microsoft Visio previewer:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{21E17C2F-AD3A-4b89-841F-09CFE02D16B7}