Outlook crashing on large mailbox download.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Patrick Keenan
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Patrick Keenan

Hello,
I've just adopted a pair of machines with Outlook 2003 where the user has a
540-meg, 25,000+ item online inbox. Outlook has been set to leave
messages on the server forever and the user never empties it. Very lately,
Outlook started crashing at startup in msmapi32.dll, Outlook will restart,
and cycle till you get tired of it.

Eventually you may be sent to an MS page citing an error with WinFax, which
has never been on these machines.

The only way I can find around this is to create a new profile.

These don't crash, at least until Outlook connects to the mail server and
gets close to finishing downloading the mailbox. Downloading the online
inbox takes at least five hours, and once it completes or gets close,
Outlook crashes and will not run until a new profile is created. That one
is fine until it connects.. and so on. Both machines behave this way.
New PST files don't help.

Apparently, there's an issue with larger downloads like this. I'm going to
clear out the user's mailbox and change retention to a few days. Anyone
have any other tips?

Thanks!
Patrick Keenan
 
Patrick Keenan said:
Hello,
I've just adopted a pair of machines with Outlook 2003 where the user has
a 540-meg, 25,000+ item online inbox. Outlook has been set to leave
messages on the server forever and the user never empties it. Very
lately, Outlook started crashing at startup in msmapi32.dll, Outlook will
restart, and cycle till you get tired of it.

Eventually you may be sent to an MS page citing an error with WinFax,
which has never been on these machines.

The only way I can find around this is to create a new profile.

These don't crash, at least until Outlook connects to the mail server and
gets close to finishing downloading the mailbox. Downloading the online
inbox takes at least five hours, and once it completes or gets close,
Outlook crashes and will not run until a new profile is created. That
one is fine until it connects.. and so on. Both machines behave this
way. New PST files don't help.

Apparently, there's an issue with larger downloads like this. I'm going
to clear out the user's mailbox and change retention to a few days.
Anyone have any other tips?

Thanks!
Patrick Keenan
Click to expand...

Some other things - all the files are local, the mailbox is POP, and there
are no add-ins.

-pk
 
The msamapi32.dll error indicates that a prior version of the Office 2007 beta was installed and then uninstalled.

Try this - close Outlook, rename the MSMAPI32.dll to .old (do NOT touch the mapi32.dll file) the restart Outlook. Does the performance improve?

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, Patrick Keenan asked:

| Hello,
| I've just adopted a pair of machines with Outlook 2003 where the user
| has a 540-meg, 25,000+ item online inbox. Outlook has been set to
| leave messages on the server forever and the user never empties it.
| Very lately, Outlook started crashing at startup in msmapi32.dll,
| Outlook will restart, and cycle till you get tired of it.
|
| Eventually you may be sent to an MS page citing an error with WinFax,
| which has never been on these machines.
|
| The only way I can find around this is to create a new profile.
|
| These don't crash, at least until Outlook connects to the mail server
| and gets close to finishing downloading the mailbox. Downloading
| the online inbox takes at least five hours, and once it completes or
| gets close, Outlook crashes and will not run until a new profile is
| created. That one is fine until it connects.. and so on. Both
| machines behave this way.
| New PST files don't help.
|
| Apparently, there's an issue with larger downloads like this. I'm
| going to clear out the user's mailbox and change retention to a few
| days. Anyone have any other tips?
|
| Thanks!
| Patrick Keenan
 
"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"
The msamapi32.dll error indicates that a prior version of the Office 2007
beta was installed and then uninstalled.

Try this - close Outlook, rename the MSMAPI32.dll to .old (do NOT touch the
mapi32.dll file) the restart Outlook. Does the performance improve?
=============

That's interesting because as far as I know those machines have only ever
had Office 2003, and I will check.

thanks for the reply!

-pk

=============

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, Patrick Keenan asked:

| Hello,
| I've just adopted a pair of machines with Outlook 2003 where the user
| has a 540-meg, 25,000+ item online inbox. Outlook has been set to
| leave messages on the server forever and the user never empties it.
| Very lately, Outlook started crashing at startup in msmapi32.dll,
| Outlook will restart, and cycle till you get tired of it.
|
| Eventually you may be sent to an MS page citing an error with WinFax,
| which has never been on these machines.
|
| The only way I can find around this is to create a new profile.
|
| These don't crash, at least until Outlook connects to the mail server
| and gets close to finishing downloading the mailbox. Downloading
| the online inbox takes at least five hours, and once it completes or
| gets close, Outlook crashes and will not run until a new profile is
| created. That one is fine until it connects.. and so on. Both
| machines behave this way.
| New PST files don't help.
|
| Apparently, there's an issue with larger downloads like this. I'm
| going to clear out the user's mailbox and change retention to a few
| days. Anyone have any other tips?
|
| Thanks!
| Patrick Keenan
 
"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"
The msamapi32.dll error indicates that a prior version of the Office 2007
beta was installed and then uninstalled.

Try this - close Outlook, rename the MSMAPI32.dll to .old (do NOT touch the
mapi32.dll file) the restart Outlook. Does the performance improve?

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
=============
Just to follow up, no version of Office 2007 had ever been installed on
these machines. The problem appears to be related to mail download size or
connection time, and it's fixed now for these machines. No modification of
Outlook or its files was needed other than using a fresh profile.

To fix it it, I cleared the online inbox, created a new profile with
retention set to a few days (which can actually mean several hundred
legitimate emails over a weekend, plus the junk), and now Outlook works
fine, and does not crash.

So it would appear to me that Outlook 2003 has a profile corruption issue in
this circumstance. I will agree that this circumstance is probably
unusual, though it might be experienced by people using gmail accounts with
Outlook.

For information, to clear the 540-meg, 25,400 item online inbox, I used two
stages starting with using the ISP's web interface to delete the largest
thousand or so emails so that the second stage would be faster. Web
interfaces often display in groups of 25, and allow selction and deletion of
all items displayed. Online deletion is pretty quick except for the page
refreshes. Doing this probably saved several hours on stage 2.

I used Outlook Express as a tool to download the remaining mail items, and
more importantly delete them, in 4000-message blocks. I made a new
identity to log on to that mail server, and I deliberately interrupted the
downloads at around the 4000 mark. To be sure that I didn't overwhelm the
OE inbox, I created multiple folders to hold the message blocks. OE has a
reasonable display of its activity in terms of total messages to be
downloaded and messages actually downloaded.

If you cancel the message download and move the messages out of the inbox
*before* OE actually terminates the last message download and says it's
done, the messages will *not* be deleted from the server. Patience is
needed.

-pk

==============

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, Patrick Keenan asked:

| Hello,
| I've just adopted a pair of machines with Outlook 2003 where the user
| has a 540-meg, 25,000+ item online inbox. Outlook has been set to
| leave messages on the server forever and the user never empties it.
| Very lately, Outlook started crashing at startup in msmapi32.dll,
| Outlook will restart, and cycle till you get tired of it.
|
| Eventually you may be sent to an MS page citing an error with WinFax,
| which has never been on these machines.
|
| The only way I can find around this is to create a new profile.
|
| These don't crash, at least until Outlook connects to the mail server
| and gets close to finishing downloading the mailbox. Downloading
| the online inbox takes at least five hours, and once it completes or
| gets close, Outlook crashes and will not run until a new profile is
| created. That one is fine until it connects.. and so on. Both
| machines behave this way.
| New PST files don't help.
|
| Apparently, there's an issue with larger downloads like this. I'm
| going to clear out the user's mailbox and change retention to a few
| days. Anyone have any other tips?
|
| Thanks!
| Patrick Keenan
 
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