Can "check for updates" get it wrong? (Outlook crashing four times a day)

My outlook in Office XP is crashing every few hours This has been

happening for a few weeks and this morning Word crashed with a request

that I send an error report as well.



I have tried compacting, Detect and Repair in Outlook and repair
installation from the install discs without outlook running as well as
SCANPST on the outlook.pst file to no avail.



Although I am not usually doing the same thing when it crashes (and
sometimes outlook crashes while it is in the background while I am not even
working in it) It especially seemed to crash in the last week or so with a
Fatal Exception Error while I was trying to insert a .JPG file in a
particular e-mail I was trying to send. (Up until this occasion, this never
presented problems before and it MAY just be a problem with this particular
email). I then managed to send the file by using Outlook Express which didnt
seem to mind inserting the jpg files at all



I'm nowhere near the .pst size limit AND have auto-archived now AND the
problem

persists: The only issues I have are that everything happens syrupy slowly.



I have 744 MHz, 256 Meg and a swap file on a D drive. System Information
shows

Total Physical Memory 256.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 65.10 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 633.33 MB
Page File D:\pagefile.sys






There SHOULD be

enough memory but I get the impression that the slowness must be because the

OS isn't releasing memory properly (when it closes down applications?). When

I start, everything seems to happen reasonably quickly but pretty

immediately thereafter (and often with only one program running???),

everything slows to a crawl which no amount of updating the OS to renew

DLLs, defragging, scandisking, registry checking, and (usually the best one)

SFC /scannowing seems to help. I even tried to repair the installation and

then a whole repair installation.



Word otherwise works fine but is extremely slow looking in directories in
its OPEN

FILE screen, which I figured was just a quirk of Word which I never

had in the old days when everyone used WordPerfect (but Photoshop 7, which

I would imagine is the most memory intensive application I have, seems to

work as well as it should)



Though I cant see how this OS problem could affect specifically Outlook?



Is there any way I can get into the continuous error reports it makes to

Microsoft every time it crashes to find out what is going on? It dutifully

thanks me for doing this but doesn't tell me what it reports. Surely that

would tell me something? When I pressed MORE INFROMATION, it told me that
updates were available which I needed to download. (I THOUGHT that I had
auto-download all updates running all the time for XP and XP Office) So I
dutifully went to the update site, where I saw three pages of updates it
said were available. It then scanned my installation both without any
Office application running and with Outlook and Word running and was told
that no updates were needed



Outlook shows 10.4219.4219 SP-2. Under DISABLED ITEMS it shows that it
disabled the preview pane because it was preventing outlook from running
properly



No one on the Outlook forum had any ideas on this crashing problem



The other thing I Have noticed is that it often gets hung up sending and

receiving email and I can see it trying to do this seventeen or more times.

If I close it and reopen it immediately, this problem simply goes away,

everything is received immediately and continues to be received until the

next time this problem reappears

How does OL behave if you use the safe option to start OL?
ie from run: outlook.exe /safe

Or how does OL and your PC behave if you use msconfig to disable all non MS
startups?

512mb of sys memory might be better

"news.microsoft.com" wrote in message
...
My outlook in Office XP is crashing every few hours This has been

happening for a few weeks and this morning Word crashed with a request

that I send an error report as well.



I have tried compacting, Detect and Repair in Outlook and repair
installation from the install discs without outlook running as well as
SCANPST on the outlook.pst file to no avail.



Although I am not usually doing the same thing when it crashes (and
sometimes outlook crashes while it is in the background while I am not
even
working in it) It especially seemed to crash in the last week or so with a
Fatal Exception Error while I was trying to insert a .JPG file in a
particular e-mail I was trying to send. (Up until this occasion, this
never
presented problems before and it MAY just be a problem with this
particular
email). I then managed to send the file by using Outlook Express which
didnt
seem to mind inserting the jpg files at all



I'm nowhere near the .pst size limit AND have auto-archived now AND the
problem

persists: The only issues I have are that everything happens syrupy
slowly.



I have 744 MHz, 256 Meg and a swap file on a D drive. System Information
shows

Total Physical Memory 256.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 65.10 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 633.33 MB
Page File D:\pagefile.sys






There SHOULD be

enough memory but I get the impression that the slowness must be because
the

OS isn't releasing memory properly (when it closes down applications?).
When

I start, everything seems to happen reasonably quickly but pretty

immediately thereafter (and often with only one program running???),

everything slows to a crawl which no amount of updating the OS to renew

DLLs, defragging, scandisking, registry checking, and (usually the best
one)

SFC /scannowing seems to help. I even tried to repair the installation and

then a whole repair installation.



Word otherwise works fine but is extremely slow looking in directories in
its OPEN

FILE screen, which I figured was just a quirk of Word which I never

had in the old days when everyone used WordPerfect (but Photoshop 7,
which

I would imagine is the most memory intensive application I have, seems to

work as well as it should)



Though I cant see how this OS problem could affect specifically Outlook?



Is there any way I can get into the continuous error reports it makes to

Microsoft every time it crashes to find out what is going on? It dutifully

thanks me for doing this but doesn't tell me what it reports. Surely that

would tell me something? When I pressed MORE INFROMATION, it told me
that
updates were available which I needed to download. (I THOUGHT that I had
auto-download all updates running all the time for XP and XP Office) So I
dutifully went to the update site, where I saw three pages of updates it
said were available. It then scanned my installation both without any
Office application running and with Outlook and Word running and was told
that no updates were needed



Outlook shows 10.4219.4219 SP-2. Under DISABLED ITEMS it shows that it
disabled the preview pane because it was preventing outlook from running
properly



No one on the Outlook forum had any ideas on this crashing problem



The other thing I Have noticed is that it often gets hung up sending and

receiving email and I can see it trying to do this seventeen or more
times.

If I close it and reopen it immediately, this problem simply goes away,

everything is received immediately and continues to be received until the

next time this problem reappears

"DL" dl@spoofmail wrote in message
...
How does OL behave if you use the safe option to start OL?
ie from run: outlook.exe /safe
Or how does OL and your PC behave if you use msconfig to disable all non
MS startups?

Great idea, I didnt even know that safe mode existed for Outlook alone and
there is no reference to it on the microsoft site but I did it and Outlook
started (and looks) in exactly the same way it starts normally.
Unfortunately it only lasted about four or five hours before it suddenly
generated another of those close-error report error messages AND it doesnt
seem to be picking up my mail as often as it should be (based on the number
of junk mail messages I get and their frequency).

I can't realistically disable ALL non Microsoft lines in my MSCONFIG start
section, can I? Symantec, Adobe, Apoint, etc (there are already two of them
which I disabled some months ago when they were put there by some trojan
which neither sysclean nor adaware nor spybot discovered but which stopped
my system from working properly: Both of which are characterised by square
boxes replacing all descriptive words in the left pane!!)

One last thing: I notice that I have Office SP2 installed and although there
is an SP3 available (OfficeXpSp3-kb832671-client-enu which is supposed to
bring MY version 4219.4219 up to 4219.6304), the scan process doesnt
highlight the need for it. I DID download it and tried to run it with the CD
in the tray it seemed to be trying to access but was told that "the expected
version of the product isn't found on your system". Which doesnt appear to
be correct?

If you leave OL running, what is the polling interval set to? ie check for
new mail
It should'nt be less than 10 mins

If its running for 4/5 hrs before crashing out it sounds more like a
resource problem, as to whether OL or Win...?

"news.microsoft.com" wrote in message
...

"DL" dl@spoofmail wrote in message
...
How does OL behave if you use the safe option to start OL?
ie from run: outlook.exe /safe
Or how does OL and your PC behave if you use msconfig to disable all non
MS startups?

Great idea, I didnt even know that safe mode existed for Outlook alone and
there is no reference to it on the microsoft site but I did it and Outlook
started (and looks) in exactly the same way it starts normally.
Unfortunately it only lasted about four or five hours before it suddenly
generated another of those close-error report error messages AND it doesnt
seem to be picking up my mail as often as it should be (based on the
number
of junk mail messages I get and their frequency).

I can't realistically disable ALL non Microsoft lines in my MSCONFIG start
section, can I? Symantec, Adobe, Apoint, etc (there are already two of
them
which I disabled some months ago when they were put there by some trojan
which neither sysclean nor adaware nor spybot discovered but which stopped
my system from working properly: Both of which are characterised by square
boxes replacing all descriptive words in the left pane!!)

One last thing: I notice that I have Office SP2 installed and although
there
is an SP3 available (OfficeXpSp3-kb832671-client-enu which is supposed to
bring MY version 4219.4219 up to 4219.6304), the scan process doesnt
highlight the need for it. I DID download it and tried to run it with the
CD
in the tray it seemed to be trying to access but was told that "the
expected
version of the product isn't found on your system". Which doesnt appear to
be correct?

"DL" dl@spoofmail wrote in message
...
If you leave OL running, what is the polling interval set to? ie check for
new mail
It should'nt be less than 10 mins
Sounds like a good idea: I had a problem with my Hosting Service which had
set their servers to reject any email check which came in more than four
times every five minutes (I think they had been having denial of service
attacks) until THEY reset their servers. Althhough that problem has now
gone, how do you change polling time in Outlook?
If its running for 4/5 hrs before crashing out it sounds more like a
resource problem, as to whether OL or Win...?

But it sometimes crashes every five minutes or so before settling down to
crashing only once or twice a day. And sometimes just after boot when
nothing else is running

But your idea of getting into safe mode was interesting in that often taking
windowss into safe mode will solve problems next time you boot normally

This time, having checked that no updates were needed, I downloaded the
FULL version of SP3 and then installed it, and it installed. Not only that,
it then would scan and told me that all kinds of other patches were
available which I also downloaded and installed. (NOW we'll see if the
system is any more stable)

Polling: is under Tools/Options/Email ...check for mail every xxx

"news.microsoft.com" wrote in message
...

"DL" dl@spoofmail wrote in message
...
If you leave OL running, what is the polling interval set to? ie check
for
new mail
It should'nt be less than 10 mins
Sounds like a good idea: I had a problem with my Hosting Service which had
set their servers to reject any email check which came in more than four
times every five minutes (I think they had been having denial of service
attacks) until THEY reset their servers. Althhough that problem has now
gone, how do you change polling time in Outlook?
If its running for 4/5 hrs before crashing out it sounds more like a
resource problem, as to whether OL or Win...?

But it sometimes crashes every five minutes or so before settling down to
crashing only once or twice a day. And sometimes just after boot when
nothing else is running

But your idea of getting into safe mode was interesting in that often
taking
windowss into safe mode will solve problems next time you boot normally

This time, having checked that no updates were needed, I downloaded the
FULL version of SP3 and then installed it, and it installed. Not only
that,
it then would scan and told me that all kinds of other patches were
available which I also downloaded and installed. (NOW we'll see if the
system is any more stable)