Microsoft Outlook 2003 Opening and closing e-mail was very SLOW
Until now.
I came across this great post: http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=11047
I had been searching for an answer to the slowness that I was experiencing with opening and even closing emails with Outlook 2003. Whenever I double-clicked an e-mail message, more so HTML in particular, it would draw the window border on the screen, then approximately 5-10 seconds later finally display the message. VERY annoying since I am a power user with e-mail and expect it to be extremely quick.
What’s interesting to note is I used to have XP Professional with Internet Explorer 6. I also was very diligent in keeping up-to-date with SpyBot Search & Destroy immunization updates as well as SpywareBlaster immunization updates. These two programs add a huge list of known bad websites to IE and FireFox’s blacklists. With XP Pro and IE6 and full immunizations from both programs, I never had an issue with Outlook.
I purchased dual Western Digital Raptor 150GB 10,000RPM drives and decided to wipe the OS and reinstall. I run the Raptors in a RAID-1 setup for maximum redundancy and with the elite Intel SATA Matrix controller, it is extremely fast. I loaded XP Pro again, loaded all security updates, including Internet Explorer 7, loaded Outlook 2003 again, loaded SpyBot and SpywareBlaster with full immunizations. I also switched permanently to FireFox as my main browser. Before, I was dancing around with IE6 and FireFox, mainly using IE6 cuz of the extremely fast load time.
So with this brand new OS reinstall and everything nice and fresh, I one day noticed how slow Outlook 2003 starting behaving. Opening e-mails was taking 5-10 seconds at times. Other times it was extremely quick and instantaneous. I tried EVERYTHING. I tried removing some features during Office’s setup program for Outlook. I trimmed the fat, so to speak. I removed Add-ins such as Adobe PDF, Exchange forms, etc. I really dived in.
Finally, however, I find the solution via http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=11047
I uninstalled SpyBot and SpywareBlaster completely and immediately noticed an improvement with Outlook. HTML e-mails now open up instantaneously!
Internet Explorer 7 is probably the main culprit however. One client had experienced strange printing behavior where the text was printed out extremely small. It was later determined, after several hours, days, and a couple weeks of random troubleshooting, that it was IE7. A complete uninstall of IE7 was the remedy for the small print problem in her Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2003 emails (I had tried upgrading her to Outlook 2003 to fix the problem).
The moral of the story: Why does Microsoft’s software affect other, almost completely non-related software? IT MAKES NO SENSE!
Tags: outlook, Software, troubleshooting