It seems he couldn't launch Libre Office and when he tried to open valid email attachments they wouldn't work either.
I decided the best thing to do was update Libre Office, but then I had to download the file.
My friend has S-L-O-W DSL so it took abut 10 minutes to get the file. Then the machine kept hanging up during the install. I did a second download. Same problem.
At this point I tried a restart. The machine hung up and didn't shut down at all, so I had to do a hard shutdown with the power button. After all this and getting back to his desktop, I finally got Libre Office to install. A 5 minute job took an hour.
This is an HP small form factor desktop - probably a Pentium or i3 CPU and 4 GB of RAM. He has all kinds of stuff running like Skype and the thing runs like a dog. HDD storage of course, not SSD.
I am used to snappy performance - even with Windows 10. I don't know how my friend can use that HP crashbox.
Edited by raymac46, 18 May 2017 - 01:29 PM.