Word 2016 (VL/ProPlus) Slow Launch Involving RoamingCustom.dic

Question

Have a 6-server RDS-SH farm running Server 2019 with volume licensed Office 2016 Pro Plus. This client does have a 365 subscription for Sharepoint/Teams. User profiles are redirected via policy to a file server exclusively for profiles and home folders. Roaming appdata is redirected to user's home drives; folder called AppData. Running on vSphere with shared Hybrid Storage, 10GBe throughout. Recently, users have complained that launching Microsoft Word and a blank document template is "Slow". Verified that Word goes "Not Responding" for nearly 45 seconds. ProcMon traces the behavior during this even to several calls to the RoamingCustom.dic file, in this environment located at H:\AppData\Microsoft\Office\16.0\5ce3b63e\Proofing.
Deleting RoamingCustom.dic does not change slowness behavior. Word Recreates the file upon launch. Disabling RoamingCustom.dic within word DOES correct the behavior. Deleting the '5ce3b63e' folder (different for each user, haven't determine how this is derived yet) - DOES correct the behavior. Word recreates the folder and RoamingCustom.dic on launch. Verified AV isn't catching anything on this file. Verified no other file access issues to the file server where H: is housed. Oh - SMBServer logs on the FileServer indicate "File system operation taking longer than expected" - yet ONLY for the RoamingCustom.dic file within user's folders. Event does not occur if the directory is recreated by Word. What makes this 1KB file so darn special??

Answer 1

Have exact same issue. Disable <uncheck> the RoamingCustom.dic and Word/Outlook work fine. Packet capture reveals to me that when I have RoamingCustom.dic in play, I experience a SMB2 Lease Break notification from the file server right before the client goes unresponsive. A working system does not experience this same SMB event. Experiencing this with our virtual environment only. After the latest MSOffice patch.
Simplified environment as much as possible. Problem persists.

Answer 2

Hi @BF,

I suggest you read this article about "roaming settings":

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/office-2013-resource-kit/jj733593(v=office.15)?redirectedfrom=MSDN#what-are-roaming-settings

Maybe you can get any useful information from this article.

---

If the response is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Answer 3

Ahhh! You may be onto something there, Emi. Traditionally, "Roaming" (in my mind) means to "Put data in the %appdata% (roaming) instead of %localappdata%". (Roaming profiles, for instance). At some point it seems someone made the decision to re-define "roaming" as "cloud". I do in fact have a GPO setting that is setting user toolbar settings to "roam", as this is an RDS farm and they need that capability across session hosts. I'll read through the attached with more detail, and determine if changing "Roam" settings changes the behavior.

Answer 4

Though... That still does not answer why re-creating the directory structure does NOT cause an issue, whileas re-reading the already existing directory (1KB file) causes an SMB error.

Answer 5

No dice with adjusting the policy "Disable Roaming Office User Settings". While I'm sure this setting actually is doing something regarding traffic to/from the cloud - it doesn't affect the creation/modification of ROAMINGCUSTOM.DIC.

1. Deleted folder structure from H:\AppData\Microsoft\Office\16.0\6e258327\Proofing.
2. Launch word, Blank Document. FAST LOADING.
   1. Folder structure above is recreated, RoamingCustom.DIC is empty, 0 bytes.
3. Close word.
   1. Folder structure/file remains unchanged.
4. Re-Open word. Blank Document. SEVERE DELAY.
   1. RoamingCustom.DIC now showing 1kb size, has my "DisplayName" (sign-in display name from "Account" in office".

Appears to me some background process/thread is populating roamingcustom.dic in a strange way, as previously reported by the SMB errors that occur only on updating.

My next steps around this are either to investigate a way to remove/disable that roamingcustom.dic from all users, OR, enable the policy that disables the Office sign in, as this is volume licensed and the sign in is really unnecessary.

If I can obtain some more debugging information or details, I'll post it. Not expecting a resolution, to be honest - just trying to share the struggles.