Outlook stops sending and receiving

[Chris]

We have one Vista machine with Outlook 2007, 2-3 times a day it stops
sending and receiving until the PC is rebooted, after a reboot it is fine
for a few hours. I have reinstalled Outlook but it is still a problem. All
the other machines have XPP and Outlook 2007 and don't have a problem.

Has anyone seen this problem? Should I downgrade the pc to XPP?

 

[Antares 531]

I have a similar problem with Outlook on a desktop computer running
Windows XP Pro, SP3. I have MS Office 2007 on this computer. When
Outlook goes catatonic I can use the Ctrl-Alt-Del function then "End"
the Outlook entries shown there. This usually clears the problem for a
few hours, but I have not found a permanent cure. Gordon

 

[Antares 531]

in


Entries? You have more than one instance of outlook.exe running?
There's your problem. Outlook demands write access to the .pst file.
Multiple instances of outlook.exe trying to write to the same file but
some of which will get locked out means they hang. Apparently you
tried to exit Outlook but it did not exit, or you started another
instance of Outlook when one was already running (and did not use the
/recycle switch on the command line used to open Outlook again).

Multiple instances of outlook.exe could also be Chris' problem.

Thanks for your response. This may indeed be the situation, but I
don't yet know how multiple instances of Outlook came to be running. I
didn't start a second Outlook window, nor did I notice any hang when I
tried to exit. It may be a computer glitch that causes the incomplete
closure of Outlook, but why does it show up only with this one client?
Gordon

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)]

Do you have any add-ins running or other apps that might be initiating
another instance of Outlook but not shutting it down properly?

--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com

 

[Antares 531]

Do you have any add-ins running or other apps that might be initiating
another instance of Outlook but not shutting it down properly?

Not that I'm aware of, but it may be that Microsoft Windows Indexing
function was the culprit. It does seem to have cleared the problem up
when I disabled Indexing. I'll see how it goes for a week or so before
I jump to any conclusions, however. Gordon

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)]

Is this a fairly new installation - first few days? If so, you might
just need to give indexing the time to finish. Or is it a somewhat
older/slower machine?

Do you have multiple desktop search products installed? Google Desktop
AND Windows Desktop Search for instance?

--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com

 

[Antares 531]

Is this a fairly new installation - first few days? If so, you might
just need to give indexing the time to finish. Or is it a somewhat
older/slower machine?

Do you have multiple desktop search products installed? Google Desktop
AND Windows Desktop Search for instance?

This is a fairly new computer I built last fall, using a Gigabyte
GA-P35-DS3L motherboard, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and two matched
1GB memory sticks. Overall, the computer works very well and seems to
be very stable.

I have given the search function a long time to stabilize but it
didn't. And, the Desktop Indexing function was also a constant problem
in that it would go on and on and on trying to do its indexing but
keeping me from using some of my client software effectively. I have
no other desktop search products installed.

With Windows Search and Desktop Search disabled, the computer works
very well and I've had no further problems.

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)]

You might try having it delete and recreate the index.

--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com

 

[Gordon]

Not that I'm aware of, but it may be that Microsoft Windows Indexing
function was the culprit. It does seem to have cleared the problem up
when I disabled Indexing. I'll see how it goes for a week or so before
I jump to any conclusions, however. Gordon

Do you have a PDA or cell phone attached to your machine?

 

[Antares 531]

Do you have a PDA or cell phone attached to your machine?

No, I do not have either of these attached. It seems to have been
caused by the indexing process being slow and nothing could progress
until the indexing process got out of the way. Now that I've disabled
both the Microsoft Indexing and Desktop Indexing the computer works
fine. I've had no problems since doing this about a month ago. Gordon

 

[Antares 531]

in


How is yesterday a "month ago"?

Yesterday you said you had an existing problem of multiple instances of
outlook.exe getting loaded. Outlook wasn't exiting properly. You had
to kill (and were still killing) them to get Outlook working again.

Yesterday you said that disabling the file indexing solved your
"problem" (which would've been the multiple loaded instances of
outlook.exe).

Yesterday was a month ago? Your timeline isn't kosher.

My error. I meant to say that I have recently (yesterday) had multiple
instances of Outlook running and had to close them to get Outlook to
come alive. That is a separate problem from the Indexing quagmire.

When I disabled Indexing it seems to have eliminated or greatly
diminished the problem of multiple instances of Outlook running.