Outlook 2003 IN Terrible Shape

[Dean]

I added the following to an old thread I had done and got no response for
awhile, so I think that, maybe, I should have posted as a new item, so here
goes:

My outlook has been exhibiting more and more delays. As K Orland originally
recommended, I did detect and repair, then scanpst.exe, and then compacted
my PST but it hasn't helped. My Outlook is so slow as to be almost useless
now. I can type say, 5 words, at a time, then have to wait 30 seconds for
it to catch up, etc, etc.

Does anyone have any helpful ideas for me, PLEASE!!! I did later notice
that I only had about 2.7GB left on my hard drive of about 80GB and so I ran
the equivalent of scandisk. then deleted so that I would have more than 15%
free which then allowed me to run defrag. Even with only 2.7G free, Outlook
was the only program exhibiting slowness symptoms that I could notice.
Still things are no better.

If the problem is likely in Outlook rather than in my PST, does it make
sense to uninstall Outlook, then reinstall and import the PST?

Thanks much!
Dean

 

[Charles W Davis]

Uninstall and reinstall will do nothing that Detect and Repair didn't do.

Since you state that your hard drive is 80BG, I would guess that you should
look to the amount of RAM that is installed on your machine. Additional RAM
is relatively cheap. When you have Outlook open you are using a large amount
of RAM and the computer is constantly paging due lack of RAM. When hard
drive space is low, the paging is further hampered.

Just a thought.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Hi Dean

See if this anything in here will help
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1669902&SiteID=17

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1669726&SiteID=17

 

[Dean]

Under system information, total physical memory is 1 GB, available physical
memory is 179 MB with excel and word and IE7 and outlook express and outlook
open. Is this the right measure and, if so, is it enough, or small enough to
slow things down? If I have multiple big excel spreadsheets open, as
opposed to just one, now does that matter much?

Thanks!
Dean

 

[DL]

What happens with OL if you use msconfig to disable all startups, then in
Services Tab hide all MS disable the rest, then reboot - you will get a
warning msg which you should accept. Then start & use OL, same behaviour?
NB this process will disable any AV & third party Firewall

 

[Dean]

Thanks, Peter. The 2nd link seems like a perfect match for my
configuration, office 2002 but upgraded to outlook 2003 and IE7. I guess
that author is hoping Microsoft will deal with it soon. Is there any reason
to think they know or care?

The first link has a lot of stuff which somewhat confuses me. There's a lot
about spybot being the problem. I do have it under add/remove programs,
from my last anti-spam campaign, but am pretty sure it is not active. I
uninstalled it just in case. There was also something about changing the
security Zone to "Internet" rather than "Restricted sites", so I did that,
though I am clueless as to the implications of such - can you advise? It
looks like it wiped out my restricted sites and that seems like a bad thing,
though no one seemed to warn against it.

Other than that, there was reference to removing two updates, but most
seemed too concerned to do that. Also, there was something about going back
to IE6 which would be ok with me, if it's safe. I actually liked IE6
better. Any thoughts?

For now, the problem seems better, but it seems to be somewhat intermittent,
coming and going.

The only other thing that concerns me is that I had other slowness symptoms
such as opening e-mails and switching from sent items to in boxes whereas
everyone in these threads seems to only mention issues with slow typing.

I'd appreciate any other help to sort through this maze. As I said, if IE6
is safe enough and IE7 is necessary to have a problem, I would be fine with
going back to IE6.

Thanks again!
Dean


Hi Dean

See if this anything in here will help
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1669902&SiteID=17

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1669726&SiteID=17

 

[Randy Brook]

I posted in your earlier thread a similar problem. What you might try
is running Outlook 2003 in Safe Mode. If you see your problems
disappear but you can still get all your mail, then that is a clue.
This was my experience.

I don't know what it is a clue to, unfortunately, since I just noticed
this yesterday and don't know much about Outlook's Safe Mode. It would
be an indication - at least - that it isn't related to your Internet
connection or Exchange Server. It would probably also indicate that it
isn't a question of too little system memory or hard drive space, or a
damaged or too large a PST file.

 

[DL]

Since you upgraded are you still using your origonal pst (data file) which
as its the older version will have the size limitation.
A 2003 unicode data file does not have this limitation

 

[Dean]

The need for the Unicode file, after getting 'running our of space' type
messages, was the reason we upgraded.

 

[DL]

You could try setting up a new Profile, with a new empty data file and see
if the problem persists.

 

[Dean]

Thank you, DL, and everyone who has chimed in. I haven't responded for a
couple of days because the problems seems to have disappeared, at least for
now. I can best guess that it was related to my changing Outlook's security
zone to "Internet" rather than "Restricted sites" (see below, actually, my
restricted sites are still there after all, if I navigate over to that), as
advised in one of those links Peter sent me. I remain clueless as to the
implications of doing such. Can someone tell me if the "Internet" choice is
a bad one to keep for Outlook 2003?

Also, would anyone care to comment briefly on the inadvisability of going
back to IE6, particularly since I don't much like IE7 anyway?

If and when this problem resurfaces, I will try the tests advised.

Thanks very much!
Dean

 

[Dean]

Ok, problem is back today (strange intermittency of problem) and I did what
you said. After rebooting, I noticed that nothing on the startup tab is
checked but most things on the services tab were checked - is that the way
it should be?

In any event, it did not help Outlook at all. Still long delays. So what
does that tell us and what to do next?

Thanks!
Dean

 

[Dean]

I hesitate to post this, since I fear you folks will lose interest and the
problem will come back soon (it already has shown these signs of
intermittency), but things are OK again now. However, I have not rechecked
anything on the msconfig startup tab and nothing is checked except ctfmon,
which seems to have checked itself.

What should I do to put startup back? I didn't think to record what was
checked and what wasn't. Other than the warning each time I reboot, the
computer seems none the worse for wear for having nothing but cftmon
checked.

It may be my imagination, but it almost seems like if I rush into Outlook,
right after it says its finished sending and receiving and all, it is
absurdly slow (and after that it doesn't speed up, except possibly upon
reboot), but if I give it another 5 minutes, it's OK. Doe this make any
sense?

One last thing. I have been having lots of problems with Microsoft .NET
Framework, Version 1.1. I assume this would be unrelated to these Outlook
slowness problems, right?

Thanks!
Dean

 

[Dean]

After a few weeks without any problem, the slowness problem returned today.
I believe that the problem disappeared after my restoring the system to an
earlier point and, just last night, I decided to try to end my ensuing
moratorium on accepting windows updates.

Therefore, it is concluded that it is one of the windows updates that is
compromising my Outlook. I just restored my system back to the prior day's
settings and all looks fine again. In fact, I seem to recall that this
incompatibility with Some Windows Updates problem for Outlook 2003 was
described in one of the links DL sent me. I will check it again now.

I seem to recall that, after I find the offending update, I can tell Windows
Update (XP) to always skip that one, right?

Dean

 

[Brian Tillman]

I seem to recall that, after I find the offending update, I can tell
Windows Update (XP) to always skip that one, right?

Yes. Why not install the updates one at a time and when you find the
offender, simply uninstall it and mark it to not display again.

 

[Dean]

Sounds like a good, if not tedious, idea!
Thanks

Yes. Why not install the updates one at a time and when you find the
offender, simply uninstall it and mark it to not display again.