Office push Notification Utility Assembly stopped working

snifferpro · Mar 22, 2025

Getting this error on every startup.

Tried reinstalling Office 2021 but error still occurs.
Tried running sfc - no problems found.
Tried running the Office updater - still get error.

I believe this error started after a windows update on or about 03-08-25

Windows Version 24h2 (OS Build 26100.3476

Any help on this error would be appreciated.

Thanks.

antspants · Mar 22, 2025

Hi, welcome

That update/build is KB5053598 Windows 11 Cumulative Update build 26100.3476 (24H2) - March 11

I don’t use 24H2 so I am unsure, can that update be removed? Might be worth checking if the error stops if you can.

antspants · Mar 22, 2025

Antivirus can be a hassle, if using 3rd party.

Some extra things to consider trying:

Fix: Windows Push Notification User Service Has Stopped Working - MiniTool Partition Wizard

This article provides some solutions to fix the “Windows Push Notification User Service has stopped working” issue together with the detailed instructions.

www.partitionwizard.com

snifferpro · Mar 23, 2025

antspants - That article refers to Windows Push Notification) which is working.
The error message I'm getting is "OFFICE push notification utility assembly STOPPED working"
Which sort of tells me that the process was started and STOPPED working.
It also clearly says OFFICE not Windows.
Just for giggles I did go to that link and opened services and the Windows service is running.
Could not even find Office Push Notification in the list.
Can't really remove the update you mentioned.

Thanks for your efforts though.

antspants · Mar 23, 2025

The reason I posted that link is because I thought if Windows Push Notification System Service wasn’t operating properly it might interfere with the Office push Notification Utility Assembly. I can read that your post “clearly says Office not Windows.”.

The only other things I could suggest (just for giggles) is checking eventvwr for anything relating to the Office push Notification Utility Assembly.
Try disabling Office COM add-Ins, seing if there is a change.
Is it .Net reliant? Try reinstalling .Net.
Short of that, try creating another User Account to see if the problem exists there also.

snifferpro · Mar 23, 2025

Checked event viewer and found the attached image.

Rataskanken · May 12, 2025

snifferpro said:
Checked event viewer and found the attached image.

This has been a pain also for me, with a private licence of Office16 Pro stolen by Microsoft by involuntarily converting it to the Office365 hydra. This happened the very moment I logged into my work account, where the IT department seems to be married with Microsoft. I have tried before to remove this file, but it is put back in place by the Mighty Hand of Microsoft (unless it is a virus toat goes undetected. My take on this is that if the system cannot read or alter this file, it should also not be able to start a kernel process based on this code. I therefore renamed the file to opushutil.exe_ (note the pending underscore), created (in a non-protected directory) an empty textfile that was renamed to opushutil.exe, copied it as administrator to the directory where it was found in the Error log entry, overriding the warning, and then removed all inherrited permissions from this empty dummyfile. This left the empty opushutil.exe file without any permissions, and only me as administrator and owner can manually grant permissions to it. This has worked before on stubborn code that reappears automatically by some malignant action of Microsoft. Let's see how it turns out this time.

HG23Phenom · May 28, 2025

Rataskanken said:
This has been a pain also for me, with a private licence of Office16 Pro stolen by Microsoft by involuntarily converting it to the Office365 hydra. This happened the very moment I logged into my work account, where the IT department seems to be married with Microsoft. I have tried before to remove this file, but it is put back in place by the Mighty Hand of Microsoft (unless it is a virus toat goes undetected. My take on this is that if the system cannot read or alter this file, it should also not be able to start a kernel process based on this code. I therefore renamed the file to opushutil.exe_ (note the pending underscore), created (in a non-protected directory) an empty textfile that was renamed to opushutil.exe, copied it as administrator to the directory where it was found in the Error log entry, overriding the warning, and then removed all inherrited permissions from this empty dummyfile. This left the empty opushutil.exe file without any permissions, and only me as administrator and owner can manually grant permissions to it. This has worked before on stubborn code that reappears automatically by some malignant action of Microsoft. Let's see how it turns out this time.

Precisely what I was about to do and I came across your post. Before implementing, just thought I'd ask if you'd run into any issues so far?

Although I can uninstall this specific office push notification utility using nirsoft tools, I had a feeling that it would probably come back, or even worse, brick my install which MS is week known for with MSIx installed 2016 office package suite and then wanting you to provide license again which I cannot find anymore. Their way of getting us off these perpetual licenses, real POS.

nomsdictate · Oct 4, 2025

snifferpro said:
Getting this error on every startup.

Tried reinstalling Office 2021 but error still occurs.
Tried running sfc - no problems found.
Tried running the Office updater - still get error.

I believe this error started after a windows update on or about 03-08-25

Windows Version 24h2 (OS Build 26100.3476

Any help on this error would be appreciated.

Thanks.

There is a scheduled task in task scheduler - task scheduler library - microsoft - office.
It is called office background push Maintenance, and it calls an exe named "opushutil.exe /pushregistration".
I disabled the task, but it always comes back.
I even replaced opushutil.exe with a dummy program, but some windows feature is checking this and replaces it with the original exe again.
The whole thing is a real pita.
I don't have M.$ Office except the free version of onenote and the push notification is another totally nagging crap from M.$.
So far, I haven't found a way to properly get rid of it.
I always replace opushutil.exe at system start, but there seems to be another task which is run during the day and which restores opushutil.exe.
I suspect it is from the RestartManager utility, but I couldn't track it down yet.

Hornblower409 · Oct 4, 2025

nomsdictate said:
I disabled the task, but it always comes back.
I even replaced opushutil.exe with a dummy program, but some windows feature is checking this and replaces it with the original exe again.
I always replace opushutil.exe at system start, but there seems to be another task which is run during the day and which restores opushutil.exe.

Long thread on this problem on the MS Q&A Forum
Application error - opushutil.exe (16.0.18429.20132) - Microsoft Q&A

My guess would be that it is Office Update that is replacing your dummy exe because Update is "stuck" doing an update that includes replacing that file with a new one.

-- I don't have M.$ Office except the free version of onenote

Completely uninstall and re-install OneNote?

Or try rolling back to a previous Office version and see if the auto update to the current version can finish?

"Switch to specific version – updatetoversion" in
Simple ‘one click’ force an update to Microsoft Office

nomsdictate · Oct 5, 2025

Hornblower409 said:
Long thread on this problem on the MS Q&A Forum
Application error - opushutil.exe (16.0.18429.20132) - Microsoft Q&A

My guess would be that it is Office Update that is replacing your dummy exe because Update is "stuck" doing an update that includes replacing that file with a new one.

-- I don't have M.$ Office except the free version of onenote

Completely uninstall and re-install OneNote?

Or try rolling back to a previous Office version and see if the auto update to the current version can finish?

"Switch to specific version – updatetoversion" in
Simple ‘one click’ force an update to Microsoft Office

Thanks for pointing me to that thread.
I already tried a complete uninstallation of OneNote without success.
As I said I don't have another office so rolling back is not applicable and disabling the update of onenote is no option.
My workaround is to replace the opushutil.exe with my dummy exe at system start and closely before it is run during the day.
My opushutil.exe is a real exe which does nothing, so that it doesn't throw an errorlevel when invoked.
The Office Background Push Maintenance Task runs on logon of any user and another time at 14:03 on my system.
I tried to disable the task, delay it or reschedule it, but it always gets repaired by some background task.
So I run my replacement task with highest privileges also at system start and at 14:00.
If there is a race at system start, I may also add a shutdown script.

Batch:

@ECHO off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

REM declare variables
SET OPUSHUTILdir=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\vfs\ProgramFilesCommonX86\Microsoft Shared\Office16
SET OPUSHUTILfile=opushutil.exe
SET doPAUSE=0

cd /d %OPUSHUTILdir%

fc /b %OPUSHUTILfile%.dummy %OPUSHUTILfile% >nul

REM "if ERRORLEVEL X" returns TRUE for every error >= X !!
if ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO :ERR1
EXIT /B 0

:ERR1
COPY  /Y %OPUSHUTILfile%.dummy %OPUSHUTILfile% >nul
START "" cmd.exe /c "@ECHO %OPUSHUTILfile% corrected && PAUSE"

EXIT /B 0

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