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Today I noticed that at all PowerPivot workbooks on my machine started to crash on opening.

When I opened workbook with PowerPivot few seconds later I saw that SQLDumper.exe started with message:

unable to open file \\?\c:\Program Files\Microsoft Analysis Services\AS OLEDB\10\FlightRecorderCurrent.trc, error2

Then I saw another error message popup:

Microsoft PowerPivot Engine has stopped working

And then final error:

Unable to load the Vertipaq engine

============================

Error Message:
============================
External component has thrown an exception.
============================
Call Stack:
============================
Server stack trace:
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.MarshaledInvoke(Control caller, Delegate method, Object[] args, Boolean synchronous)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.Invoke(Delegate method, Object[] args)
   at Microsoft.AnalysisServices.Modeler.FieldList.GeminiProxy.MethodInvokeCallBack(String memberName, String dispID, BindingFlags flags, Object[] args, Boolean ignoreRetry)
   at Microsoft.AnalysisServices.Modeler.FieldList.GeminiProxy.HandleMethodInvoke(IMethodCallMessage callMessage)

Exception rethrown at [0]:
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.HandleReturnMessage(IMessage reqMsg, IMessage retMsg)
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.PrivateInvoke(MessageData& msgData, Int32 type)
   at Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.OLEDBConnection.Reconnect()
   at Microsoft.AnalysisServices.Modeler.FieldList.InProcServer.LoadOLEDBConnection(Boolean raiseCompleteEvent)
============================

I had few things happen to my PC since I was able to work with my PowerPivot workbooks without problems:

• My machine has SQL Server 2005 AND SQL Server 2008R2 tools installed. Last week I applied SQL Server 2005 SP4 and then SQL Server 2008R2 SP1 on this machine.
• I updated Office 2010 with latest service pack.

Solution

I was able to fix this problem by simply un-installing PowerPivot and then installing it again.

More details

It appears that applying SQL Server service packs and/or Office services packs replaced some PowerPivot files. Here is the screenshot of the folder c:\Program Files\Microsoft Analysis Services\AS OLEDB\10

And here is the screenshot of the same folder after I reinstalled PowerPivot:

As you can see, files Microsoft.Data.DataFeedClient.dll and xmsrv.dll have different timestamp and I suspect that was causing PowerPivot corruption issue.