Sorry, something went wrong and Word was unable to start. (24)

Started getting errors when previewing Office documents in Explorer preview pane.  When selecting a Word document and waiting for the preview to appear, we’d get this:

    Sorry, something went wrong and Word was unable to start. (24)

Excel docs also had an error but it consisted of a dialog with a red exclamation point.

All of the machines this happened on all originally had 64-bit Office 2013 before it was uninstalled and replaced with 32-bit Office 2013 because of compatibility issues with a required plug-in.

In trying to figure this out, various uninstall/reinstall methods were used but nothing made a difference until I fired up procmon and used it to make comparisons with a working machine.

On a system that only ever had 32-bit Office 2013, the following key existed:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{84F66100-FF7C-4fb4-B0C0-02CD7FB668FE}

On a system with 64-bit Office this key also existed

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{84F66100-FF7C-4fb4-B0C0-02CD7FB668FE}

The 32-bit key contained information while the 64-bit key was empty.

As soon as that HKLM key was renamed(eventually deleted), everything worked again – didn’t even need to restart or log out.

It seems like the Office uninstaller might be forgetting this key when it does its thing.

Hope this helps some people

More:

http://www.cyann.net/2015/07/10/solved-not-enough-memory-or-system-resources-to-start-office-preview/

To fix these errors and repair the preview pane, run Regedit as administrator and delete these registry keys:

Microsoft Excel previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{00020827-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

Microsoft PowerPoint previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{65235197-874B-4A07-BDC5-E65EA825B718}

Microsoft Word previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{84F66100-FF7C-4fb4-B0C0-02CD7FB668FE}

Microsoft Visio previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{21E17C2F-AD3A-4b89-841F-09CFE02D16B7}