Outlook 2007 broken - hangs after startup

[kenjo]

Outlook 2007 starts but than hangs once I select any of the email folders. I can select menus initially. But it's only when I select an email folder that it displays the 'busy cursor' in the preview window and never recovers. If I leave outlook in this state long (few minutes) the rest of the system becomes unusable. My .pst is local and the inbox repair tool comes back clean (no errors). I've tried disabling some non-Microsoft addin's but i still cannot access email Eventvwr does show some outlook events related to the indexer - not sure if this is related or not yet.

Would very much appreciate help in getting email working again. This is intolerable.

Thanks
Ken

[jdc2000]

You could try renaming your .pst file before running Outlook. You should get a message that it could not be fould when you start Outlook. If Outlook still hangs, then you may need to repair or remove and re-install it. If Outlook works OK after creating a new .pst file, then the old .pst file may still be the cause of the problem.

[kenjo]

Yeah, i thought about that too but the didn't try it yet since the inbox repair tool came back clean.

One thing to add though:
I had been going back and forth between PCs reading my email (one with Vista using Outlook 2007, the other with XP Pro using Outlook 2003). That worked for the past few weeks without problems. But I'm now thinking that there may be an incompatibility between the two that's just surfacing. I think i'll post another thread on incompatibilities or upgrade strategy when bridging between Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007....

In any case, i'll try the clean approach tonite and let you know. Thanks.

[kenjo]

Thank you jdc2000. I tried the new pst file but it still hangs at the same point. I am seeing that it's send/receiving while it's hung. Maybe my install went bad. I will try reinstalling Outlook and post the results.

[kenjo]

I wanted to try more experiments to try and diagnose the cause. I've narrowed it down to the fact that it's the FIRST email you display that triggers the hang. Outlook eventually does return from the hung state (exactly 9 minutes (540 seconds)) and work properly for that same session. Viewing other emails within the same Outlook session also work fine and do display immediately.

The issue seems to be narrowing down to displaying your first email within a session. If you close and restart Outlook than you'd have to wait exactly 9 minutes again for the first email you select to display (during which Outlook is "Not Responding"). Why 540 seconds? is there an outlook registry setting related to this value? and why on the first email you view??

More information from the experimentation:
1) Sending and receiving is not related. Outlook is able to successfully receive on startup, and after it comes out of the hung state.
2) I disabled the reading pane for the folders. I can than select the folders and walk up/down the email subjects as long as I don't display them.
3) The first selected email displayed triggers the hang. The hang can be triggered because the reading pane is enabled or because you open an email to view it.
4) The hang is consistently 9 minutes long (exactly 540 seconds). After which Outlook returns to a useable state AND displays the selected email.
5) It does not matter which email folder is selected or what email is opened. Same behavior consistently.
6) No event viewer entries corresponding to the hang. I looked through the ENTIRE event viewer logset (including the Application and Service Logs) and nothing relevant found to the hang timeframe.
7) You can preview the email (see the first 3 lines of the email within the folder) but opening the email triggers the hang.

[kenjo]

After a lot of online research I believe I solved it. Outlook 2007 uses the Microsoft Word editor. I couldn't find a way to disable it like you can in Outlook 2003. My research found that Microsoft Word has a known problem with Norton Anti-Virus (NAV). My HP laptop came with NAV pre-installed. Microsoft Word will hang on startup with the words "Running Virus Scan..." at the bottom. This Word/NAV conflict surfaced during the Vista Beta and from my experience is not fixed yet. See the following article for details: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329820/en-us].

My theory was that since Outlook 2007 uses Word and Word has a known hang with NAV that Outlook cannot render the email because Word is hanging.

I uninstalled NAV and rebooted. Word started properly. I closed it and than started Outlook. Voila!! It can display emails without delay.

Thanks to everyone for help. Let's hope it lasts.

Ken

[jdc2000]

Thanks for the update.