So I’ve been running Office 2010 x64 for quite some time now – through alpha, beta and the RC. Now, I’m waiting for RC with the hopes that this has been fixed.
Seems there’s a little something wrong with the Name ActiveX Control that SharePoint uses for OCS presence info. Whenever I run any SharePoint site, I get stuck with a bunch of JavaScript errors, which in turn break other scripts, leading to a less-than-optimal experience.
Does this look familiar?
Debugging the page gives a bit more insight, but not much:
So we know it’s the IM Presence Control – (on a side note, this is why internet-facing SharePoint sites you may come ask you to run ‘Name ActiveX Control’).
I did some fishing through the IE Add-ons, only to realize that the NameCtrl is missing – then it hit me…
The Problem
I’m running Windows 7 x64, and the x64 Office 2010 clients. Where does this lead us? The x64 version of Internet Explorer.
Hit your start menu and type ‘internet explorer 64’ – you should see it pop up in the menu.
Fire this up, and browse to your SharePoint site – you’ll notice an error-free interface – no JS errors – meaning any of your additional scripts (like the one we use for navigation) will work properly.
So take a look into the Add-Ons in IE x64 – you’ll see the NameCtrl ActiveX control listed in there.
Which makes sense, if you think about it – the default IE in Windows x64 is 32-bit IE, ironically to maintain plugin compatibility…64-bit plug-ins aren’t going to work in 32-bit IE, so it all falls into place.
But the irony here leaves us with a new problem – do we use IE x64 for everyday use? Or find a 32-bit NameCtrl to install into 32-bit IE?
Of course, there’s one other problem – no presence. Even though the NameCtrl gets loaded and is available to the DOM, it doesn’t seem to be communicating with Office Communicator very well (I’m running 2007 R2 – x86, since there isn’t an x64 version)…none of my contacts have proper presence.
The Fix
Luckily, there’s an easy fix. Fire up an administrative command prompt. Navigate over to your 32-bit Program Files folder, and find Office in there – C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14.
In here, you’ll find Name.dll and a few other files. At the command line, type this:
regsvr32 name.dll
Hit enter – you should get a notification that DllRegisterServer succeeded:
Kill all of your Internet Explorer windows, and open the 32-bit version (the default) back up. Open up the IE Add-Ons, the previously-absent NameCtrl ActiveX control should now be listed…open your SharePoint site and enjoy.
