If anone can help, i'd appreciate it...
Recently, whenever starting Outlook 2003, it immediately shuts down!
No
reason, no logs, no errors, just gets to the splash screen, and then
shuts down.
The only alterations that I can think of that were recently made, was
the installation (and subsequent de-installation) of Bullguard
Internet
Security.
I have tried opening Outlook with the /safe switch, and that works
fine, but the standard /recycle switch fails.
Might be you installed an add-on that doesn't work with Office 2003 or
the latest Office service pack that you have installed. When Outlook
starts, it needs to load all those add-ons, and if one screws up then
Outlook cannot start, either (and Outlook also unloads them on exit so
they can screwup Outlook if they fail to properly unload).
Since you already tried Outlook in its safe mode ("outlook.exe /safe")
which will not load any add-ons on Outlook startup, and since that
works, then your problem is with an add-on. So disable or remove it
(Tools -> Options -> Other -> Advanced, I think is the navigation path,
look at both add-ons and COM plug-ins). Note that Outlook doesn't
necessarily list all COM plug-ins so you might have to uninstall the
Bullguard and any other recently installed software.
The /recycle switch does nothing regarding how Outlook loads add-ons.
It merely has outlook.exe check if there is already an outlook.exe
process loaded in memory and switches focus to that instance. It
prevents you from loading multiple instances of outlook.exe into memory.
Also, make sure when you are trying to start Outlook that there is not
already an outlook.exe process in memory (use Task Manager to check).
Outlook has had a lingering problem that Microsoft has never addressed
regarding exiting of Outlook. Add-ons can foul the exit process for
Outlook and force it to leave behind a stub of code that is typically
non-functional but can interfere with loading it later (as another
instance of itself), and I've also seen it interfere with Word and even
with Explorer. Although add-ons are typically the cause of outlook.exe
stuck in memory after trying to exit it, I've seen the problem happen on
a fresh install of Windows and a fresh install of Outlook. Check in
Task Manager if outlook.exe is running (and if you haven't used it in
awhile because some plug-ins, like for backup, will take awhile to run
while pending the exit of Outlook to do their backup). If so, kill it
and try loading Outlook again. Users that have noted that rebooting
Windows fixed the problem probably had a remnant instance of outlook.exe
still stuck in memory and could've just killed that process rather than
do a reboot.
