Calender Resource Crashes Outlook

[John W]

We have several exchange 2000 calenders set up as resources. All work fine
except one which when you try to look at free/busy info or just book a
meeting using that calender it will crash outlook 2003 clients with a error
message to forward to microsoft - the culprit it says is outlib.dll. Works
fine in Outlook 2000, OWA, Outlook 2007...I am hoping not to have to recreate
the calender as it has many meetings from many people....

Thx

John

 

[Nikki Peterson [MVP - Outlook]]

To detect the offending item

1) Open the resource mailbox in Outlook

2) Create a New folder (Calendar Test)

3) Do an advanced find on the old calendar and sort events by recurrence.

- Press F3
- Change the Look For: text box to Appointments and Meetings
- Click on the Advanced tab
- Click Field
- Select All Appointment fields
- Select Recurring
- Condition: equals
- Value: Yes
- Click the Add to List button
- Click Find Now

Drop and drag from advanced find listed events one at a time to the new
calendar, when you get to the corrupt item it will give you an error
message. (delete this item)

Move all your calendar items from Calendar Test folder back to original
calendar (these are previously dragged over items).

Contact Organizer.

If this does not fix the Calendar Freeze:

Try starting Outlook with the /safe command line switch. Go to the calendar
folder to see if Outlook freezes.

If there is a freeze I would guess one of the following.

1) A reminder or free/busy information couldn't be cleared. Try starting
Outlook with the /cleanfreebusy and /cleanreminders command line switch
while no items are stored in the calendar folder

2) A corrupted view. Try starting Outlook 1 time with the /cleanviews
command line switch

If there is no freeze when starting with the /safe switch -- visit the
folder you moved the items to and see if Outlook freezes. If it does, there
is still a corrupt item that Outlook can't deal with. If there is no
freeze, then I would guess that file outcmd.dat is corrupt. Rename this file
and restart Outlook. Outlook will recreate a new outcmd.dat file on open.

Outside of that --- beware of Offline Storage (*.OST) files. You might have
to create a new profile and temporarily disable Offline Storage while you
troubleshoot this issue. There is a registry key called NoOST
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q277780) that can
be used to disable this feature so an end user can't enable it through the
GUI.

Related Info:
OL2000: Outlook 2000 Stops Responding at the Startup Splash Screen
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305928
Nikki

 

[John W]

Hi Nikki - Thanks for the reply. Tried these to no avail. As i dig into this
further, it appears that the crash occurs with all Outlook clients and it
only occurs when you view free/busy data. I ran the swith to clean free busy
data with outlook logged in as the resource....

Thx

John

 

[Nikki Peterson [MVP - Outlook]]

Have you tried to use the "Detect and Repair" for the machine
that you are using to access the resources? You may try this.

You could try to export all of the Calendar items into a pst,
then import them back in. This will force a refresh of all
calendar items.

Nikki Peterson