Vista / Outlook repeated crashes

[Graham J]

Modern Dell PC running factory installed Vista Home Premium, with Office
2003 installed from a Microsoft "Action Pack" distribution. All full
updated.

Out look repeatedly crashes while downloading emails. An error window pops
up, giving the option of looking on the web for the solution to the problem,
but clicking on this simply closes Outlook without opening the browser.

Event log shows a report like this:

Problem Event Name APPCRASH
Application Name OUTLOOK.EXE
Application Version 11.0.8217.0
Application Timestamp 480f95d9
Fault Module Name ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version 6.0.6001.18000
Fault Module Timestamp 4791a7a6
Exception Code C0000005
Exception Offset 0043250
OS Version 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID 2057

The Fault Module Name, Exception Code and Exception Offset are the same each
time it crashes.

Google has not found me anything that looks relevant.

There are three accounts (using POP3) each using a different mail server,
and each receives around 1000 emails per day (mainly spam, obviously). Junk
filter set to move everything to the junk folder that is not recognised as
coming from an address in the whitelist. Grisoft free AVG running. Mail
checked at 10 minute intervals. Mail left on server, and removed after 1
day.

Outlook crashes several times per day, always while downloading emails.
Restarting it generally results in the current emails being downloaded OK,
the next failure failure occurs after an hour or so.

ScanPST runs OK and does not find any errors.

I support several other systems using Outlook 2003, some on Vista; but have
not seen this before. No other program crashes this machine.

Any ideas?


-- Graham J

 

[DL]

Try opening outlook using the safe switch & see if the crash is reproduced
Run
Outlook.exe /Safe (note space between exe /)

 

[Graham J]

Try opening outlook using the safe switch & see if the crash is reproduced
Run
Outlook.exe /Safe (note space between exe /)

[snip]

All the other newsgroups I frequent flame you unmercifully if you top post.
What is the convention here?

 

[DL]

There isnt one regarding this, as far as I'm aware

Try opening outlook using the safe switch & see if the crash is
reproduced
Run
Outlook.exe /Safe (note space between exe /)

[snip]

All the other newsgroups I frequent flame you unmercifully if you top
post. What is the convention here?

 

[Graham J]

Things tried so far:

1) ScanPST: first run found and corrected trivial errors, subsequent runs
find no fault

2) Run in safe mode for a few minutes

3) Run memory test: 6 passes in about 5 hours, no errors found

4) Turn on debugging (Other | Advanced | General)

5) Run in safe mode for about 12 hours; no failure seen. Not sure whether
this is a significant lenght of time ...

6) Run normally; fails within about 2 hours. Can't see any additional
debugging information in event log; where should I look?
Add-in manager shows: Google desktop search; AVG exchange extension;
Exchange extensions property pages. These all have a tick and there is an
install button. Presumably this means they could be installed. Have
unticked all for the moment ...
COM Add-ins: Outlook Backup Add-in. This is required for normal use, and
has not caused problems on other systems; so have left it for now.

Next test: Run normally, but with Add-ins unticked.

 

[DL]

If it ran for 12 hours when started with the safe switch, that would tend to
indicate an add in missbehaving

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

All the other newsgroups I frequent flame you unmercifully if you top post.
What is the convention here?

While I prefer bottom posting, because of what many people use to post (the
web interface), I think you'll find a lot of top posting here as well.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Things tried so far: ....snip...
6) Run normally; fails within about 2 hours. Can't see any additional
debugging information in event log; where should I look?
Add-in manager shows: Google desktop search; AVG exchange extension;
Exchange extensions property pages. These all have a tick and there is an
install button. Presumably this means they could be installed. Have
unticked all for the moment ...
COM Add-ins: Outlook Backup Add-in. This is required for normal use, and
has not caused problems on other systems; so have left it for now.

The first thing I'd do in this situation is to 1) leave Google Desktop Search
unchecked and 2) uninstall AVG completely (via Control Panel), then reinstall
it without the mail scanning feature. You don't need it anyway, as long as
the on-access scanner runs.