Hope this helps
When I worked supporting Outlook Express 5 & 6 this was a common issue. It
is usually the "Protected Storage System Provider" registry key and
associated files. This can also caused by a corrupted "Imagehlp.dll" file
but this is more rare. 99% of the time is was caused from the Pstore files,
see link below. This article applies to OLEX 5 but it always did the trick
in WinXP with OLEX 6 or Win98\ME with OLEX 6. This issue can also be caused
by an antivirus program running that may be scanning the email folders of
OLEX if you have a large amount of mail in the folders it can take a long
time. Again, if it takes 4 to 5 minutes for OLEX to open it is most likely
the Pstore reg key and files. Pretty easy to fix. You are actually using
an OULOOK newsgroup and not an OLEX newsgroup.
235300 - OLEXP: Outlook Express 5 Starts Very Slowly
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;235300&Product=oex
