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I have a user whose Outlook 2007 client goes "not responding" for 20 minutes every time it launches. It's connecting to Exchange 2010, and this is specific to 1 user's laptop.

Here's what I have already tried:

  • Safe mode - it still hangs in safe mode
  • SCANOST with a repair, it continued to hang on startup
  • general Office diagnostic, it said it found & corrected 1 installation issue, but did not help.
  • Deleted WORD.PIP, a past source of Word related hang...just in case. Also did not help.

Once it gets past the 20 minute period, it behaves normally. Past experience has shown me when an Office app hangs on startup, reinstalling the Office suite does not always fix the problem, but that is my next step.

Laptop OS is Windows 7 64-bit Professional SP1

Joshua McKinnon
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    If the outlook tray icon is available, you can ctrl right click on it and choose show connections to see if it might be waiting on some kind of server response. – SpacemanSpiff Apr 19 '12 at 18:46
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    Fire up wireshark perhaps? – Zoredache Apr 19 '12 at 18:53
  • How big is the OST file? Is Office set to use Cached Exchange mode? – JohnThePro Apr 19 '12 at 18:59
  • @JohnThePro Yes, Outlook is in cached mode. OST file is 2.6GB - it's our Office Manager so fairly high email volume. – Joshua McKinnon Apr 19 '12 at 19:05
  • That needs to be shrunk IMMEDIATELY. Outlook is notorious for screwing up in all kinds of neat ways when that file hits 2GB. – JohnThePro Apr 19 '12 at 20:33
  • @John Is that still true as of Outlook 2007? I thought they'd fixed that with 2007. – squillman Apr 20 '12 at 02:15
  • [KB932086](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932086) does appear to be confirm that >2GB can cause performance issues...yet on the other hand Microsoft documents OST/PST limit of 20GB in Outlook 2007, and 50GB (!) in Outlook 2010... /shrug – Joshua McKinnon Apr 20 '12 at 14:12
  • @Joshua Yes, there was definitely problems when OST/PST's approached 2GB. The structure just started going straight to @!#$ and the file became corrupt. I haven't run into it since using 2007, though. – squillman Apr 20 '12 at 14:28
  • While I see occasional problems, I have a user that really needs instant searching of all mail for long periods with an 11GB OST file. The majority of the time things are just fine... – Joshua McKinnon Apr 20 '12 at 15:01
  • It's documented as 'fixed' and they support bigger OST/PST Files, but in my experience that's crap. I've had all versions of outlook (up to and including 2010) start to act strangely when that threshold is reached. – JohnThePro Apr 20 '12 at 16:23
  • I will definitely keep that in mind, I've always seen all kinds of instability in Outlook... (and my own mailbox is small) – Joshua McKinnon Apr 20 '12 at 20:33

1 Answers1

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The first thing I always try when using cached mode is to close Outlook, delete the OST, and restart Outlook. The OST will be automatically rebuild. I do this even if SCANOST reports a fix.

If that doesn't solve it I do a lot of what you've already done, but then also I try creating a new Outlook profile for the user and seeing if that solves the issue.

squillman
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  • I'll give that a shot when I can next schedule it w/ my user – Joshua McKinnon Apr 19 '12 at 19:46
  • Actually, upon double-checking with my user, the problem WAS gone this morning with just the OST file delete. I noticed it hang on "waiting to update folder" after it had fully synced and I closed it the first time... but my user's standpoint is the problem is now fixed. Sweet. (removed my previous comment) – Joshua McKinnon Apr 20 '12 at 14:58