Office error 0xc0000142
This post is for our more technically-inclined customers. If you aren’t comfortable with the following and are having trouble with Microsoft Office, please contact us for help.
We continue to encounter this error when starting Word, Excel or Outlook. The office application starts to load, then starts to update, but eventually fails to open and throws an error ending in “0xc0000142”.
We cannot seem to find a pattern behind this error. We have seen on all recent versions click-to-run Office including 2016, 2019 and Office 365.
We have had a fair amount of success with the following fix:
1. Locate the “OfficeClickToRun.exe” file. It will be located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun
If you are running the 64 bit version of Windows, this file will be located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun
2. Right click this file and choose “Send to…” then “Desktop (create shortcut)”
3. Run Task Manager as an administrator and kill “OfficeClickToRun.exe”. You may need to use something more powerful like Process Explorer from Microsoft to terminate this process.
4. Locate the new shortcut on your desktop. Add “/update” to the end of the program being launched (outside of the quotes).
5. Run this shortcut as administrator.
6. Launch an Office application, and if it successfully opens, click Account > Update Now to install the latest product updates.
Westechs LLC