Outlook locks up immediately when opened

[David Mursch]

Hi - I Use Outlook with W2k My system recently
locked up, and I closed Outlook from Task Manager. Now it opens,
does a scan of the archive.pst, and immediately locks up.

When I closed OL with Task Manager, it was in the
process of recieving an email, and I think that may be the problem. I have
tried deleting the 'view' file, moving the archive and contacts files,
restarting, rebooting etx. but none of that worked. I did recieve the
offending email from the earthlink server ysubng OE, thinking if I got
it off the server that would free up OL, but that didn't help either.
I also put in the original Office Professional CD that I used to install the
program in the first place and ran the utility that checks for errors in
Office programs and that didn't help.

I am thinking maybe I will have to do a re-install, but that makes me
nervous because I don't want to mess up the hundreds of contacts and the
myriad of business emails I have in there. I am self employed and losing
any of thant would be a big big problem.

Can you help?

..rdm

 

[DL]

If you rely on data for business, especially, not having backups is a recipe
for disaster, but I guess you know now.

Initially try running the repair tool, scanpst.exe on the pst's (with OL
closed) run it several times.

 

[David Mursch]

Thanks for the response, I ran scanpst on the archive.pst and outlook.pst
files, three times each and no errors were reported for any of the scans.
Those are the only *pst files that the W2K search utility returned.

Is there anything else I could try?

Thanks.rdm

 

[DL]

Try creating a new Profile, and attach only your main pst (not the archive)

 

[David Mursch]

Well, that worked pretty well; I can open OL and get to all my contacts and
email files except for the inbox. The one corrupt email is still stuck in
the inbox and when I try to get into the inbox, OL locks up and I have to
shut it down using Task Manager. How can I get over this?

........rdm

 

[DL]

Try opening OL and select File>Work Offline

Well, that worked pretty well; I can open OL and get to all my contacts and
email files except for the inbox. The one corrupt email is still stuck in
the inbox and when I try to get into the inbox, OL locks up and I have to
shut it down using Task Manager. How can I get over this?

.......rdm


(with problem.

 

[David Mursch]

I do not see a 'work offline' command in the file menu, and I could not find
one anywhere in the 'customize' mene. I looked at Ol help and it also
indicates that there should be a 'work offline' command in the file menu.
IN this ol profile, I do not have any email accounts; they were not included
in the outlook.pst, apparently, and i have not figured out how to get them
without going through the entire new account setup process. Anyway, I
wonder if not haveing an email account would cause the lack of a 'work
offline' command? and if so what now?

Thanks for your continued help....rdm

 

[David Mursch]

Okay, I set up my email accounts and the 'work offline' cmmand appeared;
but, OL still locks up when I try to access the inbox. I ran the Office
detect and repair tool again and no joy.

Am I at the point of doing a re-install yet, and will that do any good if
the inbox in the .pst file is corrupted? The prblem is with the inbox, not
with the OL program itself. Can I create a new .pst file by exporting from
OL everything except the inbox, then just delete the old Outlook.pst?

....rdm

 

[Brian Tillman]

Okay, I set up my email accounts and the 'work offline' cmmand
appeared; but, OL still locks up when I try to access the inbox. I
ran the Office detect and repair tool again and no joy.

Am I at the point of doing a re-install yet, and will that do any
good if the inbox in the .pst file is corrupted? The prblem is with
the inbox, not with the OL program itself. Can I create a new .pst
file by exporting from OL everything except the inbox, then just
delete the old Outlook.pst?

Rather than exporting, you'd be better off creating a new PST with
File>New>Outlook Data File (or Personal Folders File, depending on your
version, which I don't see you mention), making the new PST your delivery
location, then copying the contents of the folders in the old PST to the new
one, excluding Inbox, as you say. This will preserve data that exporting
and importing destroys or leaves out.

 

[David Mursch]

Okay i did all that: now does that mean I will just have that old locked up
inbox in the old personal folders file forever? I can work around that, but
life would be simpler if there was a way to get rid of it.

.....rdm

 

[DL]

Within OL you close the faulting pst

Okay i did all that: now does that mean I will just have that old locked up
inbox in the old personal folders file forever? I can work around that, but
life would be simpler if there was a way to get rid of it.

....rdm

 

[Brian Tillman]

Okay i did all that: now does that mean I will just have that old
locked up inbox in the old personal folders file forever? I can work
around that, but life would be simpler if there was a way to get rid
of it.

Now that you have moved everything you can from the old PST, close it with
right-click>Close to remove it from Outlook.