Performance: Outlook 2007 is constantly doing IO and buring CPU cy

[JasonD]

I am not sure what Outlook is doing, but it is constanly doing IO. I can
watch it in the Task Manager. It is number 1 for IO Reads. It seems to be
doing 500 to 1000 reads a second. This is while the application is
minimized. It is also number 1 for CPU time. It is also constanly using up
CPU cycles, far more than any other application. I am running a dual core
machine and it is constantly using between 10 and 50% of the cpu. I left it
running last night, and it used 4 hours of CPU time. That is a bit
excessive. What could it be doing? It had 30 million I/O reads and 200
million I/O other.

Note: I am not connected to an exchange server. I only use outlook to read
emails from a POP and IMAP account.

When I File->Exit Outlook, it doesn't always go away. Yes the windows are
gone and the application is not listed in the application window, but the
process is still there eating up resources.

Why is this an issue? I am on a laptop for one. When I am running on
battery I don't need Outlook running in the background making my battery life
shorter.

Other than rebooting when I don't want Outlook running, do you have any
other solutions?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

When I File->Exit Outlook, it doesn't always go away. Yes the windows are

gone and the application is not listed in the application window, but the
process is still there eating up resources.

This suggests that you have an issue with one of your addins or any
additional application that depends on the outlook.exe process to access the
Outlook data. Disable these addins or close these applications and see if
your I/O issue goes away as well.

See http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/outlookdoesntclose.htm

 

[JasonD]

This seem to be an issues between Outlook 2007 and ActiveSyc on Visa. When I
disconnect my PDA, Outlook cleans itself up and goes away.

 

[JasonD]

This seems to be an issue between Outlook 2007 and ActiveSync on Visa. When
I unplug my Smartphone, the Outlook process goes away. The question still
remains, what is outlook doing while my Smartphone is connected?

 

[Brian Tillman]

This seem to be an issues between Outlook 2007 and ActiveSyc on Visa.
When I disconnect my PDA, Outlook cleans itself up and goes away.

There is no ActiveSync on Vista. ActiveSync woesn't run on Vista. You need
the Windows Mobile Device Center.

On top if that, it's well-known that Outlook cannot stop if a PDA is
cradled.

 

[JasonD]

Ok, I got the name wrong. It is called Active Sync on the PDA and WMDC on
Vista and they talk to each other when the device is plugged in.

You are right, the Outlook process will hang around as long as I have the
PDA plugged in. It makes sense. How else could it sync email and contacts.

What doesn't make sense is Outlook eating up CPU time and doing a lot of I/O
when it isn't the active application.

Just try it. Before you go home for the night, reboot your machine, start
outlook, minimize outlook. When you come in the next morning. Take a look
in the task manager. Sort by CPU time or I/O other or I/O reads and there is
Outlook as the biggest user.

What is the big deal you might say, the computer was idle anyway. Yes, in
this case. But it is not so cool when I am working on battery power and
Outlook is needlessly keeping the CPU and disk active. What is it doing? It
isn't getting new email, because I only manually check for email from a POP
or IMAP server.

I try to keep my machine clean. No tool bars or plugins. I turn off the
Search Indexer for everthing except My Documents.

You don't need to reply, because I know there is nothing to be done. I just
have the vain hope that one of the Outlook performance testers sees this
issue and can log a bug in RAID against unecessary CPU and IO usage.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Just try it. Before you go home for the night, reboot your machine,
start outlook, minimize outlook. When you come in the next morning.
Take a look in the task manager. Sort by CPU time or I/O other or
I/O reads and there is Outlook as the biggest user.

Not for me.

You don't need to reply, because I know there is nothing to be done.
I just have the vain hope that one of the Outlook performance testers
sees this issue and can log a bug in RAID against unecessary CPU and
IO usage.

It would be nice if we could resolve the problem, but it is unlikely that
someone from Microsoft will see it here. Have you tried a new mail profile
or a new WMDC partnership?