Outlook 2003 Slowdown/Hang

[Bob Horton]

Hi!

I have a machine with an MSI MB, Athlon 32 3200+ processor, 1GB of ram,
Norton Systemworks 2003, and Office 2003. The machine works fine until I
open Outlook 2003 (this problem is new, but I have opened and used all other
software before opening Outlook to make sure that the behavior only happens
after Outlook has been opened). The behavior is a bit difficult to
describe. Basically, the whole machine stops responding (freezes) for a few
seconds, then you can move the mouse around but nothing happens (the machine
doesn't respond to any imput). I've been screwing around with this all day.
During this process I've learned by opening task manager before Outlook that
every 17 seconds some process hits the processor at 100%; otherwise the
processor load is 0%. Due to the "freezing" I haven't been able to tell
what process is involved. I do know that the size of the Outlook memory
process keeps growing (to over 85MB. Also, there appears to be 2 instances
of Outlook running in the task manager (which I just noticed right now --
this message has taken about 20 minutes to type between freezes). I've
Googled everything I can think of other than the myltiple instances, which I
am going to try right now. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bob Horton]

Hi!

I have a machine with an MSI MB, Athlon 32 3200+ processor, 1GB of ram,
Norton Systemworks 2003, and Office 2003. The machine works fine until I
open Outlook 2003 (this problem is new, but I have opened and used all
other software before opening Outlook to make sure that the behavior only
happens after Outlook has been opened). The behavior is a bit difficult
to describe. Basically, the whole machine stops responding (freezes) for
a few seconds, then you can move the mouse around but nothing happens (the
machine doesn't respond to any imput). I've been screwing around with
this all day. During this process I've learned by opening task manager
before Outlook that every 17 seconds some process hits the processor at
100%; otherwise the processor load is 0%. Due to the "freezing" I haven't
been able to tell what process is involved. I do know that the size of
the Outlook memory process keeps growing (to over 85MB. Also, there
appears to be 2 instances of Outlook running in the task manager (which I
just noticed right now -- this message has taken about 20 minutes to type
between freezes). I've Googled everything I can think of other than the
myltiple instances, which I am going to try right now. Any suggestions
would be greatly appreciated.

OK, I started OE first so that I could key this message in peace . Please
accept my apologies in advance for replying to my own post, but I was so
frustrated before that I sent the post out without including all relevant
info that I can think of. My Norton AV is NOT set to scan emails (belt and
suspenders), MS Word is set to be my email editor and has been for a long
time. The only add-in that I have is a duplicates remover for Contacts that
has been installed for at least a year with no problems. My problems began
right after I installed the MS WMF patch. I attempted to restore to an
earlier time but got the dreaded "your machine cannot be restored..."
message, which probably means that I don't have any valid restore points out
there. After watching the application stab in task manager for awhile, the
second instance of Outlook 2003 pops up when the status changes to "not
responding". FWIW, it will change back to "running" and the second
application instance will disappear for a short time, but it comes back
after a very short time. During that time (I'd guess 15-30 seconds),
sometimes the machine is usable, sometimes the cursor is stuck and showing
the hourgalss, other times it moves freely but no applications respond to
input. There is never more than 1 Outlook.exe process running. Interesting
enough, it just keeps growing in size; the time I watched for about a
half-hour, it reached 120 MB, then the machine flickered and the process
size went back down to about 8 MB (with no impact on system performance that
I can see). Again, FWIW, I can use all the other applications on the
machine basically forever with no problem until I open Outlook 2003, then
all the symptoms are there. I usually wind up having to manually shut down
the machine at that point, which means that Outlook scans the .pst and
archive file when the application is restarted, but I can't see any other
way to get back to a usable state (at least in one lifetime). This machine
is networked in a simple workgroup; no Windows Server product is being used.

In summary, the only change that I can identify was the MS patch, and I
can't just use system restore to call a mulligan. Again, any thoughts would
be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bob Horton]

OK, I started OE first so that I could key this message in peace .
Please accept my apologies in advance for replying to my own post, but I
was so frustrated before that I sent the post out without including all
relevant info that I can think of. My Norton AV is NOT set to scan emails
(belt and suspenders), MS Word is set to be my email editor and has been
for a long time. The only add-in that I have is a duplicates remover for
Contacts that has been installed for at least a year with no problems. My
problems began right after I installed the MS WMF patch. I attempted to
restore to an earlier time but got the dreaded "your machine cannot be
restored..." message, which probably means that I don't have any valid
restore points out there. After watching the application stab in task
manager for awhile, the second instance of Outlook 2003 pops up when the
status changes to "not responding". FWIW, it will change back to
"running" and the second application instance will disappear for a short
time, but it comes back after a very short time. During that time (I'd
guess 15-30 seconds), sometimes the machine is usable, sometimes the
cursor is stuck and showing the hourgalss, other times it moves freely but
no applications respond to input. There is never more than 1 Outlook.exe
process running. Interesting enough, it just keeps growing in size; the
time I watched for about a half-hour, it reached 120 MB, then the machine
flickered and the process size went back down to about 8 MB (with no
impact on system performance that I can see). Again, FWIW, I can use all
the other applications on the machine basically forever with no problem
until I open Outlook 2003, then all the symptoms are there. I usually
wind up having to manually shut down the machine at that point, which
means that Outlook scans the .pst and archive file when the application is
restarted, but I can't see any other way to get back to a usable state (at
least in one lifetime). This machine is networked in a simple workgroup;
no Windows Server product is being used.

In summary, the only change that I can identify was the MS patch, and I
can't just use system restore to call a mulligan. Again, any thoughts
would be greatly appreciated.

Once again replying to my own post, this is getting stranger. I decided to
back up all my data, since the machine was acting so funky (I do this every
Friday anyway, so it's do big deal). Anyway, I backed up 8 GB of "Stuff"
then backed up the .pst files. My archive and hotmail .pst files backed up
fine. When the machine got about 2/3 of the way through copying the outlook
..pst file, it started doing the same thing that it was doing when I was
attempting to use Outlook, as described below. Has anyone experienced
anything like this? Suggestions? TIA!

 

[patchits]

Hello Bob,

In your last message you mentioned PST files..

In many occasions, large PST files or PST files with a large number of
subfolders, will cause Outlook to freeze up..

There are a few things you can attempt;

+ Office has a tool which enables you to scan and repair PST files..
<scanpst.exe> You can search for it using Windows File Search. Make
sure you make a backup copy before repairing any PST files. The scan
should take approx 5 min.. depending on the size of the PST files,
large files (over 1 GB may take longer).

+ If you have any large PST files (over 500MB, although Outlook 2003 is
far better then 2002 in dealing with Large PST files, I would recommend
to keep these files relatively small.. ) I suggest you create a number
of new PST files, and split the large one/s to several small ones.

+ If the above does not work.. I always use the Outlook Detect and
Repair option under Outlooks Help Menu... (Also good to use as routine
house keeping) go to Help -> Detect and Repair and let it do it's
thing..

+ I would also recommend, after all the scans and splits of PST files
to create a brand new Outlook Profile and attach the newly created PST
files to the new profile, a new profile is a known cure to many Outlook
mishaps..

Hope this helps.

PatchItS :-/

 

[Guest]

Hi -

I don't know if Bob got his problem fixed, but I'm having the same one and I
checked my .pst files. They are all under 60MB. I used the scanpst.exe
program on them anyway. Errors were found and corrected (scanned clean on a
subsequent try). However, Outlook 2003 still won't load. It gets so far and
then just stops responding. I was willing to go so far as to pay Microsoft
the $35 for an e-mail request, but when they tried to gather the data they
needed, it went so far and then stopped responding too.

Jim