Outlook working really, really slowly?

[Shorty28]

We've got an old machine (P133, 64 megs ram) that we use for primarly word processing and email, but recently outlook has been running incredibly slowly. While this is an old computer, it used to run fine, until about a week ago. It takes about 15 secs for the program to open, and then normal operations take about 5 times their normal length of time. I'm worried that there may have been some sort of worm in an email that one of my family members opened, since we also began getting some strange emails a few days ago. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling to no avail...Any ideas? Or possibly a way I can check for/rid myself of a worm? Thanks

 

[Dalkin]

You should make sure you have current virus def's for whatever AntiVirus software you have installed; it should catch most worms or viruses that might give you grief. If you don't have one installed, get one!

I think Outlook and OutlookExpress scan the contents of the various mail folders when it starts. Could you just have a ton of saved messages that are bogging it down? As for the persistent slowness, other than a program(s) running in the background, or inordinate number of email messages being scanned/tracked by the software, I dunno.

Can you tell if your computer is accessing the hard drive a bunch? If Windows is using the swapfile (or parsing those large number of messages), it can slow down operation quite a bit also. G'Luck!

 

[tkdkid]

I had this problem too. It had something to do with pstores.exe. I'm not sure exactly. I ended up copying a file from another machine to my outlook folder and then it worked fine again. I guess..look for files that have been modified recently..that should indicate that a virus screwed it up.

I searched on google and got my answer..just so long again that I don't remember all the details.

 

[Felecha]

Magic!!

I've also had OE very slow, taking like 3 minutes to launch, and I read this thread, and I copied the Pstores.exe from my otyher computer into this one (after backing up the regular Pstores as PstoresSave.exe) and PRESTO!! Outlook now leaps into action just as fast as I'm used to seeing on the other machine.

So, Shorty28, after scanning for viri, if you can find a machine with a good copy of Pstores, I expect you can just copy it on a floppy (80KB) and paste it in to replace yours, and maybe it will work for you, too.