Unable to open Office Documents, SharePoint 2013 On-Prem

 

We have recently encountered a strange issue where users get stuck on the Word, Excel, Powerpoint splash logo where it says “Contacting the server for information.”  We have spent several days on this issue and it seems to have impacted a large user base.

I am working with the team here to find a resolution and as soon as I know of one I will share.

–update–

We have tested this in several test, demo SharePoint 2013 deployments and are facing the same issue.

Here is something new:  When tested with SharePoint Online the issue does not exist { scratching my head }

Joined in on a thread about this issue, where others are also facing the same incident
Link:  https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/154/p/412623/1024983#1024983

–update–

Steps taken: with no resolution

• Attempt to open from SharePoint on another piece of hardware or virtual machine with the same exact versions of Office including updates – issue does not occur
• Logging in with another use, even when creating a new profile on same affected OS / Hardware install the issue occurs
• Attempts to remove windows updates, office updates do not resolve the issue
• Repair or Uninstall followed by reinstall of Office 2013 doesn’t resolve the issue
• Tested with a new SharePoint 2013, including a pre install contoso installations, the issue occurs

Environments:

We have workstations running Windows 8.1, Windows 10 all having these issues.

Note:

1. this issue has not affected users who are using Office 2016
2. this issue has not affected users who using SharePoint Online

No much more is known about this issues cause. The only solution which works at this time is to clean install or system restore to a point prior to this issues occurrence

There is a possibility that an antivirus may be causing this issue the future of the anti virus causing it is still unknown.

*UPDATE*

In my case this incident was directly related to ESET and its filtering of HTTP requests. Disabling this filtering resolved the issue.

I must note that disabling all security isn’t the best choice so here is some info from ESET to help you filter out and white list requests to avoid such an issue

http://support.eset.com/kb939/