Outlook fails to start (intermittent)

[player2]

Hi guys, maybe you can help me out with this annoying little problem I have... Outlook 2007 fails to always start, sometimes it fails the first time I attempt to start the program (after power up) and sometimes after I have used
Outlook - shut the program down - and then attempted to reopen the program later. Sometimes it opens normally and sometimes it opens with a suggestion of using safe mode because the program failed to shut down correctly - no error messages. The only work around I have is to restart MS XP SP2. I have attempted office diagnostic's and attempted repair using add/remove program function, additionally I have downloaded all current patches. This problem has only come on since a reinstall of XP and MS office, and as mentioned above, is an intermittant problem (a proverbial pain)...
What do you think guys?

Cheers
P2

[dashinson]

I'd be installing Mozilla Thunderbird and using it as my email client instead of Outlook!


Dash.

[Globe]

I had the same problem with outlook, it never resolved itself, but slowly as time went by the symptoms exhibited themselves with other office programs, word, excel ppt etc.

The little hourglass spins for a while, then stops, but the application never opens.

A fresh windows install eventually fixed the problem. Radical I know, but it did the trick.

@ dashinson, Outlook is a hell of a lot more than email, it's contacts, appointments, reminders, calendar, in fact many people use it as a complete customer managment system, and it integrates with many other 3rd party CMS systems. In fact for many a small business loosing outlook would cripple them.

[player2]

Thanks so far guys - this problem has only come about after an XP reinstall. I have deinstalled all office products and reinstalled Outlook only, and the problem is still apparent. Have just run MS Office diagnostics, and thsi suggests a problem, so off to microsoft I go. Will let you know what transpires.

Cheers
P2

[player2]

Well, a fat lot of good that did.
Eventually scrubbed the disk and reloaded WinXP. Fixed.

I reckon the problem came about due to 2 things... (1) some time back I had 2 partitions on my system disk and decided I only wanted 1, so I rejigged things with Partition Magic 8 - got rid of D and extended C, all on the fly. (2) then I inadvertently installed SP3 for XP (big mistake in hindsight) and this failed in the final stages of install. The backout was not graceful and I have been fixing things from this ever since, so I guess this reinstall of XP from scratch was a bit overdue. Still, I could have done without it (lessons learnt).

Cheers
P2

[AussieAnt]

Player2 an alternative is to sign up for gmail then add your
present email address to the list of email addresses that way
you can have a public and a private adress with up to 5 different
email addresses to change from. Tho it can be confusing sometimes when
your answering emails to different names you just have to remember
to change the email identity..
Cheers AA