Joe McGuire said:
And do what? Change to another e-mail client for which, when it has
troubles, you cannot figure out how to fix them, either?
I am 4+ days into this absurdness with Outlook 2003 with no solution
on the horizon,
What absurdness? We are supposed to read a prelude of complaints
before finally, if ever, seeing a description of the real problem?
Explain the problem first. Then elucidate.
either to the problems I am having or to finding any of my lost
data.
So the "problems" do not include the additional problem of finding
your lost data? Oh yeah, sure, "problems", that set of fixed behavior
that is always succinctly described by just "problems", uh huh.
Possibly. Do you run backups? Any user that does not perform backups
has deemed their data trivial or reproducible.
Did a virus sneak past all that security?
All WHAT security? All anti-virus software is based on signature or
heuristics (algorithms watching behavior). That means zero-day
viruses are not detected. You could include HIPS (host intrusion
protection) in your security suite but typical users become annoyed by
all the prompts as to what should run or be blocked from loading, plus
they often don't understand the prompts. HIPS can be included in
anti-virus, firewall, or other security programs or as a program just
by itself. Some even include whitelists of hash values (signatures)
of known good programs in trying to reduce the number of prompts, if
you trust their whitelist rather than decide on each instance whether
a program is allowed to run or not.
If you don't do backups, you already made it worse. What did you
expect for recovery if your hard disk dies? It is possible you moved
or deleted files. Hard to know without any description of what
actions you performed in trying to solve the so-far-undescribed
problem.
Did I pick the wrong suggestions?
And we here would know what suggestions those were how? We aren't
there on your shoulder watching what you did, what you read, or what
you are pointing at. You are the only one resident at your computer
to know what is the history of the problem and troubleshooting it, but
none of which you bothered to share.
Did I misunderstand those suggestions?
Very possibly.
Did I unwittingly leave out some important detail?
You mean like describing the symptom(s) and what troubleshooting steps
you have taken so far? Yeah.
Were my earlier questions really signs of impending disaster?
What earlier questions? You started a NEW thread for which there is
no history. If you want to continue a discussion in a prior thread
then go post in that prior thread. You think we are really supposed
to go hunting around for your earlier and separate posts trying to
compile a history of whatever you didn't bother to describe here? If
you want help, don't go making it more difficult for readers to figure
out with what it is you need help.
Now you're asking for philosophical and religious responses.
This thread has gotten so convoluted with my attempts to get things
fixed that it probably is too confusing for any meaningful help.
Then start a new thread but still provide reasonable context for those
from whom you ask help to know for WHAT you are asking help.
Meanwhile my POP3 e-mail accounts have creditable interfaces that
work reasonably well.
"Creditable interfaces". And that means WHAT? That your e-mail
services provides a webmail interface to your e-mail account and that
works okay? Well, that just points at problems on your end which
seems pretty self-explanatory so far, anyway, but not what are those
problems.
So I think it's time to admit OL has whipped me but good and yank it
from my home computer, where I have been using successive versions
of Office on a succession of machines for at least the past 10
years. Then figure out whether to try again or switch to something
a bit less risky.
Yeah, go use another e-mail client that you don't understand, either.
Sure, that'll work, until whatever caused the problem with Outlook
also does the same for your other e-mail program. At this point, and
if you were here to really ask for help rather than just bitch about
problems that you refused to describe and have no intention to
address, start yet another NEW thread but provide the context
necessary for readers to figure out WHAT is the problem that you have.
In the meantime, read:
http://66.39.69.143/goodpost.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
http://users.tpg.com.au/bzyhjr/liszt.html