Outlook 2007 Infinte Send Loop and Corrupted Contacts

[Scott Prugh]

I see several folks are having OL2007 problems where clicking send-receive
goes into an infinte loop. This is a very frustrating problem so I thought I
would post my findings in an effort to help the community and MSFT fix the
issue.

Scenario:
After upgrading from OL2003 to OL2007 we began seeing an email Send going
into an infinite loop and sent emails would stay in the Outbox. The visual
manifestation of this is the Send Receive Box flickering constantly and the
task counter continuing to count upwards as outlook decides to continuously
resend the message.

The loop is pretty nasty in that in consumes almost all CPU on the box and
requires a kill of outlook. Putting OL in Offline mode after restarting will
stop the issue and allow one to delete the emails in the Outbox. But,
sending again will cause the issue to return.

Possible Causes:

Possible Cause#1: Read-Reciept Stuck
Some research led to this thread:
http://office-outlook.com/outlook-forum/index.php/m/290290/#msg_290290
And this thread:
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/deletereadreceipt.htm

I followed the instructions but the problem still returned. Note that this
may still be an issue but it was not causing my problem.

Possible Cause #2: Corrupt Contacts
Additional research pointed me to a discussion about corrupt contacts.
http://help.wugnet.com/office/Outlook-2007-Vista-Receive-Loop-ftopict969159.html

I noted that when clicking on a contact in to TO: field of an email would
yield the dreaded "Invalid ENTRYID" error assiciated with syncing problems.

As a test, I tried just typing in the actual email address and sending.
This worked. Then, I deleted all my contacts to prevent the problem from
returning. I will try re-importing the contacts through a cleaned up excel
spreadsheet to see if the problem will go away permanently and I can keep my
contact list.

Hypothesis:
I believe that importing a .pst file from OL2003 to OL2007 caused a
corruption of my contacts. In this case, my OL2003 was using the old .pst
file format(OL97-2000). My hypothesis is that when importing contacts like
this they become corrupted. Worse yet, there seems to be an issue in the
contact to email resolution process when outlook sends a message. If this
resolution fails, Outllook seems to loop indefintely trying to send the
message. At a minimum, Outlook should stop after the first attempt and
notify the user that the contact is corrupt.

I hope this helps and saves someone the few hours it took me to figure this
out

-Scott

 

[K. Orland]

After you upgraded, did you ever create a new Outlook profile?

 

[Scott Prugh]

Yes. And then I imported the old .pst file.

After you upgraded, did you ever create a new Outlook profile?

 

[Gordon]

Yes. And then I imported the old .pst file.

Which is the one thing posted here on at least a daily basis NOT to do.
Why not?
(Courtesy of Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook])

Importing an entire PST may well corrupt your profile and may create a ghost
PST that you can't close. Importing PST's will lose:
1. Custom Forms
2. Custom Views
3. Connections between contacts and activities
4. Received dates on mail
5. Birthdays and anniversaries in calendar
6. Journal connections
7. Distribution Lists

Opening a PST file will preserve all of these. That is why we do not advise
people to import a native file into Outlook.

 

[K. Orland]

Close Outlook. Create a new profile. You may want to scan your PST for errors
while you're doing this, using scanpst.exe. Then open Outlook and use File >
Open to open your PST instead of importing it.

 

[Scott Prugh]

One of the reasons I imported the PST was because the previous .pst file was
the old 97-2002 version and we kept hitting the 2GB limit even with archiving
monthly.

So, we imported the pst to bring the data into the new format.

So, if this is not recommended, how do I upgrade the .pst file type?

Also, how do I fix this issue now?

 

[AlexT.]

Glad to read that I am not alone

http://groups.google.com/group/micr...general/browse_thread/thread/956c572704842b39

having the very same problem as the one you are reporting.

Did your contacts cleanup get rid of the problem ?

--alexT

 

[Scott Prugh]

Not perfectly. My contacts were corrupted but I am seeing other item
corruption now(Calendars).

I believe I corrupted my .pst file by importing as opposed to just opening.
From what I have been told importing is not recommended.

So, I have to figure out how to fix it now. I wanted to upgrade my format
from 97-2002 and I believed this was the way. Silly me.

I think, OL 2007 has a bug regardless. The send should fail and not hang
Outlook. There appear to be a variety of ways this bug is encountered. If
Outlook failed the message send, it would be much easier to pinpoint the root
cause(Corrupt Contact, Calendar, Message, Stuck Send Receipt).

 

[Gordon]

Not perfectly. My contacts were corrupted but I am seeing other item
corruption now(Calendars).

I believe I corrupted my .pst file by importing as opposed to just
opening.
From what I have been told importing is not recommended.

It's not usually the pst file that is corrupted, but the Mail Profile.
Create a new one in Control Panel-Mail-Show Profiles-Add. Point it to the
pst file that already exists, into which you imported your data.
HTH

 

[AlexT.]

It's not usually the pst file that is corrupted, but the Mail Profile.
Create a new one in Control Panel-Mail-Show Profiles-Add. Point it to the
pst file that already exists, into which you imported your data.
HTH

Done that any many other things:

- to scan my PST (reported clean) and to re-create it from scratch and
reimport the old one (I understand now that this is actully not
working)
- to change the SMTP server (although the original is working just
fine with other e-mail clients);
- to "repair" my Outlook installation and to reinstall from scratch on
a clean machine
- to disable my AV (Free AVG)

What's the best way to get around this ? Just create a new profile +
pst, open the old pst and copy - paste ?

At any rate I am pretty convinced that there is a bug in O2007 when it
commes to migrating from 2003.

--alexT

 

[Brian Tillman]

One of the reasons I imported the PST was because the previous .pst
file was the old 97-2002 version and we kept hitting the 2GB limit
even with archiving monthly.

So, we imported the pst to bring the data into the new format.

So, if this is not recommended, how do I upgrade the .pst file type?

Make sure a Unicode PST is your delivery location (unless you're using an
Exchange account). Add the ANSI PST to your mail profile with
File>Open>Outlook Data File. For each NON-default folder (i.e., folders
other than the standard Inbox, Outbox, Calendar, etc.), Ctrl-click and drag
the folder to the root of the Unicode PST. For each DEFAULT folder, open
the folder in the ANSI PST. Select all the items in ot with Ctrl-A, then
Ctrl-click and drag the selection to the corresponding default folder in the
Unicode PST. For the Calendar folder, you'll need to use a table view
before Ctrl-A will select all the items. When you've copied all the data,
right-click the root of the ANSI PST and choose Close.

 

[Chen Alan]

You can use Inbox Repair tool which is used to repair corrupted file of pst. To run Inbox repair tool fallow the steps:

1. Click on start goes to the search then click on files or folders option.
2. In search box type scanpst.exe.
3. Double click on the scanpst.exe file to open the inbox repair tool.
4. Then enter the location of Pst file and its name or browse it for the path.
5. Then start to repair.

This way you can repair your pst file. But if your file is badly damaged you may not able to repair it. At that time you can use some software. You can try a tool called Advanced Outlook Repair to repair your PST file. It is a powerful tool to recover messages, folders and other objects from corrupt or damaged Microsoft Outlook PST files.

Detailed information about Advanced Outlook Repair can be found at http://www.datanumen.com/aor/

Hope this helps.

 

[AlexT.]

One of the reasons I imported the PST was because the previous .pst
file was the old 97-2002 version and we kept hitting the 2GB limit
even with archiving monthly.

So, we imported the pst to bring the data into the new format.

So, if this is not recommended, how do I upgrade the .pst file type?

Make sure a Unicode PST is your delivery location (unless you're using an
Exchange account).  Add the ANSI PST to your mail profile with
File>Open>Outlook Data File.  For each NON-default folder (i.e., folders
other than the standard Inbox, Outbox, Calendar, etc.), Ctrl-click and drag
the folder to the root of the Unicode PST.  For each DEFAULT folder, open
the folder in the ANSI PST.  Select all the items in ot with Ctrl-A, then
Ctrl-click and drag the selection to the corresponding default folder in the
Unicode PST.  For the Calendar folder, you'll need to use a table view
before Ctrl-A will select all the items.  When you've copied all the data,
right-click the root of the ANSI PST and choose Close.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

Also, how do I fix this issue now?

"K. Orland" wrote:

FWIW a full export of my contacts to a non-PST file (in my case an
Access database) and re-import cured the problem, as well as with 2
other people which I support and being subject to the exact same
symptoms.

As far as I can tell there is a serious bug in the Outlook 2003 to
2007 migration code. Thankfully not triggered too often but still
pretty nasty.