Outlook BSOD (my oldest computer)

[Willy K]

Hi,

I'm experiencing a very strange problem lately. It appeared suddenly on a system that has been running fine for ages (no new installations or recent system configuration changes too).

On my oldest computer, I'm still running WinXP and Office 2003 (sorry). Recently, the computer started to hang or crash with misc BSOD 8E, 0A, 50 etc. AS LONG AS I RUN Outlook! When Outlook is not running, the system is up and working fine for days (as before)! The same happens when running Win XP in Safe Mode! I ran the "Detect & Repair" function a couple of times, no difference. I really don't believe that reinstalling the entire Office 2003 will help much (I suspect Outlook is in conflict with some other SW/Driver but ... which one and why now?)

Of course, I've done all imaginable HW and RAM tests, CHKDSK, SFC /SCANNOW, etc. etc. No problem! The Windows Event Log or diagnostic tools do not provide any clue about what's going on. I'm simply clueless. I've never experienced such a crazy problem before (and I've had my share of Windows issues over the past 20 years also building several machines myself).

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Willy

 

[Diane Poremsky]

I'd try a new profile. You keep the old profile until you see if it helps.

Have you tried safe mode?

 

[Willy K]

Thanks Diane! I'm testing this now, and I'll let you know what happened.

 

[Willy K]

After 12 hours with a new profile no crashes yet. This looks promising (before it took less than 3-4 hours for the system to hang or crash).

I'm wondering about another possible cause. My original setup opens 23 .PST files in addition to the current Mailbox (i.e. 24 files in total). Those additional files contain archived email (1 for each year since 2000, and then some other non-private email). I haven't tested that with the new profile yet, but I'll do so as soon as I'm sure that the new profile works fine.

My question is if Outlook have some kind of limitation about the number of opened .PST files it can handle simultaneously (not in theory but in a real life situation), and if this could be a plausible cause of my problem?

 

[Forum Admin]

Some past versions had a limit of 50 and 99 - but the real limitation is due to your hardware, not outlook. If you have too many it can make outlook sluggish - it's based on your ram and processor.

 

[Willy K]

Fair enough. I had no problems with 22 .PST files and Outlook has never been sluggish thus far, so I guess it's not that.

Btw, I got another hang just an hour after my last post here, so now I have reinstalled the entire Office. We'll see how this goes.