Problem with Microsoft Outlook 2000 Professional freezing

[Eldritch]

This is a follow up post. I'm having a problem with Outlook 2000
Professional freezing on me a few seconds after I start it. The other
Office applications, Word, Excel, seem to be working okay, although the
Office Assistant (that annoying paper clip thingie) tells me it needs to
be reinstalled every once in a while. I'm running Windows XP Home Edition.


Originally, MS Office was working fine, but I was (still am) having
trouble synching to my Palm Pilot. I thought uninstalling and
reinstalling might help. But since re-installing, Outlook freezes a
few seconds after starting. Doesn't seem to matter what I do or not
do, it freezes.


I've been to Microsoft's web page and downloaded updates. Now when I
go there, it tells me that no updates are needed.


When I posted earlier, Neo was kind enough make a few suggestions.
I've attempted to start Outlook in safe mode (start|run|outlook.exe
/safe) and that is no different. Outlook freezes a few seconds after
starting.


Neo asked which mode I'm running Outlook in: Internet mail only mode.
He said that there's a bug in SP3 which causes the cpu to operate at
100%. This appears to be happening. The Task Manager tells me I'm
running at 100%. Neo said there was a fix that could be downloaded, but
as I say, the MS Office web page tells me I have all the current
downloads. Where can I find this patch?


And to add to the confusing fun, one of the times Outlook froze today,
resulted in an error report being sent to MS. To my surprise, they
responded this time, telling me the problem "might" be solved by
downloading an update for Visual Basic. So I did that. Downloaded
Visual Basic Service Pack 6.0. But no joy. When I attempted to run the
download from the download directory, it asked me to which directory I
wanted to extract the files. I had expected it to know where to go like
the many Windows patches. So I gave it a directory, and it went there.
But it's just sitting there waiting for me to figure out what to do.
My searching at MS's site talks developers a lot or this patch
updating existing programs. However, I'm not a programmer and have no
idea what pre-existing program this update is looking for. I thought
Visual Basic was part of the operating system. Silly me.


Reading another poster's problem with freezing, I read that deleting
outcmd.dat might help, but I can't find that file. The XP search
function doesn't seem to look into the Window directories anymore.


Are there any clues in this tangle of spaghetti to help me fix this
problem? At this point, I'm thinking the 100% cpu usage is the problem.



E

 

[Eldritch]

And to add to the confusing fun, one of the times Outlook froze
today, resulted in an error report being sent to MS. To my surprise,
they responded this time, telling me the problem "might" be solved by
downloading an update for Visual Basic. So I did that. Downloaded
Visual Basic Service Pack 6.0. But no joy. When I attempted to run the
download from the download directory, it asked me to which directory I
wanted to extract the files. I had expected it to know where to go like
the many Windows patches. So I gave it a directory, and it went there.
But it's just sitting there waiting for me to figure out what to do.

To supplement the above, another error message from MS, gave the me
above instructions again.

I re-read instructions and found the correct file to run from the new
directory. This launched the update, which presented an error message
saying that I do not have any Visual Basic products installed on my
computer, so the update would not be installed.


I didn't recall having it on my computer, so this seems correct.


E