Outlook Express and XP Home Ed.

I recently assembled a PC for my mother's use. She'd been using Windows 98SE up until then. I'm now several hundred mile away from her and, wouldn't you know it, Outlook Express is acting up badly. When she tries to open OE, the only thing that comes up is an error message. I followed the error code to Microsoft's site, which said it was caused by a regression error of some sort and suggested installing the Internet Explorer upgrade.

I had hoped installing Service Pack 2 would cure the problem, but Mom's on a dial-up connection, and downloading the SP that way would take a loooong time. So I stopped in at Best Buy, grabbed a free SP2 upgrade disk from them, sent it to my mother, and had her run it. But all it does is extract several files and that's it: no error message, no prompt to back up or restart the computer.

So I thought we'd take a stab at the download, but there, too, we're running into problem. After it asks for whether we want Express or Custom Install, an update failure message appears.

What the heck?

 

Tell her to bring it to a trusted computer technician. Did you leave her with the copy of Windows XP should she need a reload? That's what you should have done.

OE6 can crash for many different reasons, some of them are best analyzed from a technician's standpoint. I can think of 6 possibilities but no cure is administered without knowing for sure what's wrong.

She may even get assistance though her Internet Service Provider.

 

Just to let you all know, I was able to download SP2 on a dialup connection in four and a half hours. You don't have to do it all at once. Mine was a cumlative download. Every time you end your connection, then start the download up again, it will pick up right where it left off. You can download it over a couple of weeks, if need be. Microsoft recommends this for dial-up customers anyway.

 

I took remote control of the computer and looked into a number of possibilities, to no avail. Looks like a reload is necessary. Not worth the time to attempt to track it down any further. I'd hoped somebody might be able to offer a quick fix.

But of course. Momma didn't raise no dummies.

 

Good going!

 

Outlook Express can sometimes get AFU if the file structure gets hosed. Here is where you can look to see the .dbx files:

c:\Documents and Settings\USER\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\HEX-NUMBER\Microsoft\Outlook Express

(NOTE: USER=The user on the PC and HEX-NUMBER is a long computer generated number)

Check to see if this directory is still there, and that there is an inbox.dbx, outbox.dbx, Deleted Items.dbx, etc.

If there is not, that's your problem.

Another thing to try. Create a NEW USER on the PC. Login as the new user and try and use OE. If it works for the new user, then the old user's box is corrupted. Check the MS KNowledge base for a way to restore that structure, or if you want to take a wild stab, drag the new users Outlook Express structure over to the old user. (I am not sure this will work, however)

:-jon

 

Yeah, you could remove the boxes totally into another folder. That's bound to happen if you "packrat" mail....