Outlook 2007 will not start, except in safe mode

[TracyTThomas]

I am running Outlook 2007 SP1 on Windows Vista (SP1). I have kept up to date
with Windows updates, with the last one installed on Friday.

Outlook 2007 was running fine for a long time. The PC crashed yesterday,
then on restart, Outlook 2007 won't open in normal mode. When I open it in
normal mode, Outlook sits on the splash screen. I end the task using Windows
Task Manager, and task manager reports that Outlook 2007 was "waiting for a
response from you," but there is no dialog window.

When I start Outlook the next time, it asks to start in Safe Mode, and does
start. I ran the Office Diagnostics from Safe Mode, and no problems were
found.

I searched this newsgroup and tried two suggestions with no results:
1) I went to Tools->Trust Center and checked "Apply macro security settings
to Add-Ins"
2) I created a new profile. I set up the new profile for Outlook to prompt
for which profile to use. After doing that, when I start Outlook 2007 in
normal mode, I get the prompt, but then get stuck on the splash screen.

I would like to scan my pst file -- I read about a utility called
scanpst.exe, but I can't find that anywhere in Windows Vista.

Any tips would be welcome, otherwise, I will probably uninstall Outlook
altogether and reinstall it.

 

[Digby]

reacy,
I can't help, but I can relate to your problem even though I am using
Windows XP, not Vista. Outlook 2007 refuses to start in Normal mode, but is
OK in Safe. I've tried re-installing and running diagnostics, but it's the
same every time I re-boot. If anyone comes up with an solution that works,
I'd be grateful if you would pass it on to me.

 

[TracyTThomas]

An update on the problem is that it appears to be worse than I thought. I
can't uninstall Outlook -- the uninstall hangs (very similar to how Outlook
hangs on startup, nothing happens, no errors, it just doesn't finish). After
I killed the uninstall, I, of course, can't start Outlook in any mode. I let
the uninstall attempt to run for 10 hours, so I'm pretty sure it should have
had enough time to do it's thing.

All Windows diagnostics check out fine (chkdsk is good, scanpst of the
Outlook pst file is good). I am beginning to think that my only choice is to
reinstall all of Windows. Any other ideas?

 

[TracyTThomas]

I solved the immediate problem with Outlook not starting. I think the
solution indicates a problem of a different nature, but that's a different
story.

What I found is that Windows Search (the indexing tool) was trying to start
when Outlook started, and was not starting. The way I finally found this was
that I realized that Windows Task Manager wasn't showing me processes from
all users until I clicked the button at the bottom. After I did that, I saw
the search taking nearly 100% of my CPU. I disabled Windows Search from
running at all, and now Outlook will start properly with no problems.