Constantine said:
I have Outlook 2002 installed on both of my computers. My laptop is running
windows XP and my desktop is equipped with Vista. Outlook is doing very
well on my laptop but it refuses to remember my password on the desktop. Is
there anything I can do to make Outlook 2002 and Vista get along? I have
tried reinstalling office XP a number of times with no luck. I have also
used my recovery disk to start my HP computer from scratch, that is a clean
install. Nothing seems to help. Outlook still refuses to remember my
password. Every time that I open Outlook I am required to enter my password
even though I checked the box that tells Outlook to remember my password. I
have also tried all of the suggestions and read all the bulletins available
from Microsoft, nothing seems to help. I have no problem whatsoever using
Windows Mail on my Vista machine. I would like to be able to use Outlook
with all the bells and whistles on my Vista machine and it seems so far that
the only way I can get there is by upgrading my Microsoft office suite which
I am not inclined to do because of the expense.
Thanks for listening and hopefully for your help in solving my problem.
Outlook 2002 will NOT remember passwords when ran under Windows Vista+
(Vista and up). Outlook 2002 was coded to use pstore (protected storage
system) in the registry to cache the login credentials for the e-mail
accounts defined in Outlook; see
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb432403.aspx. pstore is no longer
available under Windows Vista/7. The registry keys are still there but are
read-only so Outlook cannot record your login credentials into those
registry keys and cannot update them through the discontinued Pstore API.
Vista+ dropped pstore and went to DPAPI. For info on DPAPI, read
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms995355.aspx. DPAPI has been
around since 2001 starting in Windows 2000. The result is that you will
need to supply your login credentials for each e-mail account that you have
defined in Outlook for the first mail poll performed by Outlook. After the
first mail poll, the login credentials are reused so you don't need to
supply them again. However, if you exit and reload Outlook then you need to
supply the login credentials for only the first mail poll.
Outlook 2003/2007 are coded to use either pstore or the newer DPAPI which
means they will run under Vista+ and pre-Vista versions of Windows.
Mainstream support for Outlook 2002/XP has ended. There will be no further
feature changes, bug fixes, or enhancements to it. That means it will
remain incompatible for use under Windows Vista+. Your Microsoft-based
solutions are: suffer with the problem when using Outlook 2002 on Windows
Vista, upgrade to Outlook 2003 or 2007, or use a different e-mail program
that runs properly on Windows Vista.
Read:
http://www.msoutlook.info/question/28
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/vista.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securi...w_to_Windows_Vista#Other_features_and_changes
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756884.aspx
The PStore keys in the registry are read-only in Windows Vista+. Removing
the read-only attribute won't fix the problem. The PStore interface used by
Outlook is not available in Windows Vista+. You cannot manually edit the
registry to retrieve or enter the passwords. PStore isn't just a location
in the registry with plain text data. It is a method of encrypting the
passwords using TripleDES that are cached in the registry in a binary
construct. Once a user is logged into Windows, the CryptoAPI can be used to
decrypt that Windows account's cached passwords from the PStore in the
registry. While Windows Vista+ no longer provides support for PStore, it
is possible to continue supporting PStore using a program. Alas, there will
be nothing forthcoming as a hotfix or add-on from Microsoft to support
PStore functionality in Outlook 2002 under Windows Vista+ because Outlook
2002 is no longer supported.
A possible solution is to use a program (as a macro that runs inside of
Outlook) that manages the encrypted password for you in the protected
registry cache. If you don't want to write the macro or cannot find a free
one already written for you, there is OLAutoPW at
http://www.mgsware.de/index.php/OLAutoPW/138/0/#403. I've never used it
(because I don't use Windows Vista+ plus I already moved to Outlook 2003).
Cost is 10 euro (~$16). It may also be possible to use AutoIt, AutoHotkeys,
or other keyboard macro programs that can trigger on specific dialog windows
to answer the password prompt for you but then you need to leave them
running all the time and write up the macro that they run along with
identifying the trigger(s) on when and in which window to run their macro.
