Outlook 2000 fails to start

[WIllem]

I've been using Outlook 2000 for years without real porblems, but today, all
of a sudden, it fails to start. The spalsh screen is shown but will never
disappear. Checking the Windows taskmanager, it does not appear as an
application, but the OUTLOOK.EXE process dis exist in the processes tab; it
keeps reading the disk, number of pagefaults and VM size keep increasing.

No changes except Windows updates have been applied to the system. (XP SP3)

I tried reboot and re-installtion (repair) without result. Re-installation
of Outlook is an optiuon I would prefer to prevent.

What could be the cause of the problem and how to solve it?

 

[DL]

You might want to run a search to inclde hidden for scanpst.exe, then double
click it and run it against your data file - probably named outlook.pst -
and see what it reports
(uninstall/reinstall is unlikely to help)

 

[WIllem]

You might want to run a search to inclde hidden for scanpst.exe, then double

click it and run it against your data file - probably named outlook.pst -
and see what it reports
(uninstall/reinstall is unlikely to help)

Found errors in one of the PST files, repaired it but that didn't help.
Even more weird: It seems the messages are being retrieved from the server,
OUTLOOK.EXE is running (as a process, not as an application) but the MAPI32
process is not started.

 

[WIllem]

Additional:
1. Sending a word doc as attachment does start process MAPI32, but
OUTLOOK.EXE is not started at all, and WORD hangs.
2. I removed all PST's, address books and email accounts (using Control
Panel) but still Outlook does not start - not a message is displayed (and
given all PST files are now removes, I would expect one, at least)

 

[WIllem]

Addition 2:

Remover Office completely and reeinstalled from scratch, set up as corporate
mail (required). Then the installation procedure hang at some point, and I
had to kill the process again..
Still doesn't work.

Could it be caused by a Windows update? There has been one...

 

[Pat Willener]

As pointed out by DL earlier, uninstall/reinstall does not usually help
with such a problem.

Try to start Outlook in Safe Mode (Start -> Run -> outlook.exe /safe)
and see if this successfully can start Outlook. Make sure that no other
outlook process is running when you try.