OL 2000 "Not Responding" or Responding V-E-R-Y Slowly

[A Baffled User]

I'm using OL 2000 on an HP Pavilion ze4900 notebook computer running Windows
XP SP2. Have been for about four years. Over the past couple of weeks, the
program has become extremely slow. When I try to open a message in the
Inbox, for instance, I get the hourglass icon for an annoyingly long time
before the message finally opens. Sometimes the "Not Responding" message
appears at the top of the OL window (like I didn't know that already!),
sometimes it doesn't.

Another odd behavior that OL has developed over the same period has to do
with what happens when I move an e-mail message from the Inbox to a
different folder. What *used* to happen was I would use the touchpad to
"left-click" on the message, then drag it into the new folder, where it
would drop when the name of the new folder became highlighted. You could see
the little gray square representing the moving message en route from the
Inbox to its new location. NOW things happen more or less normally up until
where I release my finger to deposit the message into the new folder. At
that point, the gray box remains visible, and the e-mail drops into the new
folder ONLY after I tap the highlighted folder. I have never had to tap that
folder before.

Has anyone else had this problem? I use the same OL 2000 program on my new
HP desktop computer, and nothing like this is happening.

I regularly use Windows 1-Click to clear out unnecessary files, Scan Disk,
and Defrag, all once a week. I have excellent antivirus and anti-malware
software, and I even use Ad-Aware. I just don't know what else to try.

Joan

 

[DL]

Locate the repair tool scanpst.exe & run it on your outlook data file (with
OL closed)
What size is the data file?

 

[A Baffled User]

My outlook.pst file is 533,392 KB. Is that what you mean by the data file? I
will run scanpst.exe and report back. Thanks!

Joan

 

[A Baffled User]

Darn it, "no errors were found in this file."

Locate the repair tool scanpst.exe & run it on your outlook data file
(with OL closed)
What size is the data file?

 

[DL]

Have you run Detect/Repair, within OL?
Have you updated any video drivers?

 

[A Baffled User]

Detect and Repair ran successfully but did not solve the problems I'm
having.

I have not updated any video drivers that I know of. Is that something I
should do? How does one do that?

Joan

 

[DL]

Not neccessarily something you should do, but depending on your settings for
Windows Update you may have selected to auto download/install all updates.
You should not obtain driver updates from MS, but only from hw
manufacturers, and the generally only if an update is required to cure a
problem or give editional functionality.
I was thinking maybe driver updates, with regard the refresh problem
Try running outlook after booting into safe mode

 

[A Baffled User]

Thanks. Since last I wrote, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Office.
Like everything else, it made no difference. I'll try your Safe Mode
suggestion and report back.

 

[A Baffled User]

OL behaves essentially the same way in Safe Mode as it does in Normal Mode.
The "Not Responding" message seems to be cropping up less frequently these
past two days than it was before (possibly because I've realized that you
can't do anything quickly so am not pushing the program beyond its relative
snail's pace). In Safe Mode, I still have to tap my finger on the
highlighted name of the folder to which I try to move a message to get the
gray box to go away and the message to actually be transferred to the new
folder. Maybe I should try System Restore to see if that does any good.

 

[A Baffled User]

Just when I thought I was resigned to living with OL in its slo-mo
incarnation, now it has developed another debilitating quirk. I have always
used Word as my e-mail editor. The last several times I have clicked on
Reply in an e-mail message, the program takes a v-e-r-y l-o-n-g t-i-m-e to
respond, and when it finally does respond, I get the message "Microsoft Word
has encountered a problem and needs to close." Word then closes, and I must
write my e-mail message without it. Since I write a lot of messages in
French and need accented characters, that is extremely inconvenient. What
the heck is going on here?!