Outlook 2003 hangs often

[Vista Newbie]

Hi -

I've been looking through other posts on this group and I can't seem
to find the answer to this question - please point me to the right
thread if it's already been discussed.

I have a problem with Outlook hanging far too frequently. My WIndows
Vista (Home) computer is 5 months old and I am running MS Office
2003. For most of this time, Outlook has functioned fine. However in
the last two weeks it's been hanging frequently, and regardless of
activity (email, browsing folders, editing contacts etc).

I suspect an MSN virus about 2 weeks ago (which caused my ISP to tell
me my PC had sent a significant amount of spam messages in just a few
days). I installed Kaspersky (home) v 6, which seemed to solve the
virus issue, but I suspect has created the hanging issue.

I'm still trying to ascertain whether my anti virus is in fact the
reason for the hanging and, if so, how I can tweak it to compromise
neither Outlook nor the virus protection.

On a related note, I turned off the anti-spam feature for KAV, which
is a bit of a shame as I think it worked really well. Any ideas on
another anti-spam tool I can use which won't negatively impact on
Outlook?

Chris

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

Please be more specific when you describe Outlook hanging? When does this
occur? Is it always in the same folder? Have you run scanpst.exe against
your .pst file? Does the same thing happen if you start Outlook in safe
mode? start->run->outlook.exe /safe

As for antispam, I use SpamBayes and have for many years and am delighted
with it. http://www.sourceforge.net

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.

After furious head scratching, Vista Newbie asked:

| Hi -
|
| I've been looking through other posts on this group and I can't seem
| to find the answer to this question - please point me to the right
| thread if it's already been discussed.
|
| I have a problem with Outlook hanging far too frequently. My WIndows
| Vista (Home) computer is 5 months old and I am running MS Office
| 2003. For most of this time, Outlook has functioned fine. However in
| the last two weeks it's been hanging frequently, and regardless of
| activity (email, browsing folders, editing contacts etc).
|
| I suspect an MSN virus about 2 weeks ago (which caused my ISP to tell
| me my PC had sent a significant amount of spam messages in just a few
| days). I installed Kaspersky (home) v 6, which seemed to solve the
| virus issue, but I suspect has created the hanging issue.
|
| I'm still trying to ascertain whether my anti virus is in fact the
| reason for the hanging and, if so, how I can tweak it to compromise
| neither Outlook nor the virus protection.
|
| On a related note, I turned off the anti-spam feature for KAV, which
| is a bit of a shame as I think it worked really well. Any ideas on
| another anti-spam tool I can use which won't negatively impact on
| Outlook?
|
| Chris

 

[Vista Newbie]

Hi Milly -

Thanks for your helpful feedback.

There doesn't seem to be any consistency for Outlook to hang. It can
hang after just a few minutes of operation, or the computer can be
working away quite happily for a day or two. It hangs - apparently
randomly - during message reading, retrieval, reviewing / updating
contact lists and other functionality. I've tried to build - over the
last couple of weeks - a pattern of circumstances, events, durations,
other activities, etc but nothing seems to be appearing.

Do you suggest I proceed with running scanpst.exe against the pst
file? What will this do and - I assume it's a DOS command - what's
the right command to use (with options and switches?) Do I need to
shut down Outlook to do this?

Thanks for the tip for SpamBayes. Do you have any experience of using
it along with an AV program like Kaspersky?

Thanks,
Chris