Help! Outlook screen turns negative

[Barry Watzman]

Help!

About 6 weeks ago I started experiencing situations in which all or part
of my outlook screen would turn negative while reading or composing a
message. By "negative" I mean that instead of black or blue characters
on a white background, the background would turn solid black and the
characters would turn into some inverted color (hard to read; I very
often have dark blue letters on a black background).

This almost looks like it could be a driver problem, but it happens in
no other application besides Outlook (2003). There was no specific
change in the system that I am aware of which accompanied the onset of
this, it happens sporadically (I'd say about 15% of the time at most,
perhaps less) and I can "fix" the problem by typing the in "negative"
area, but if I scroll the screen, the new text often comes in from the
top or bottom in "negative" format.

Anyone have an idea what might be causing this? The system is XP Pro,
and it's clean (I am an IT professional with a number of certifications
and I teach college level IT courses, so I'm not a novice or newbie).

Thanks,
Barry Watzman
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Does it happen when outlook's been up a long time or when a lot of programs
are open? All message formats or only a specific format?

I'd start with an updated video driver - while it may be unique to outlook,
outlook tends to use more resources than other programs so the problems crop
up sooner.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



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[Barry Watzman]

How long outlook has been up, and what other programs are running, are
not factors. I am also sure it's not a video driver issue (this machine
was built in 2006 and I don't think that the video driver (ATI All in
Wonder 2006) has been updated more than once or twice (and not recently)).

I'm not sure of the answer to your question about message formats ... I
actually thing that message format IS a relevant variable, and I suspect
that it does only happen with one or some formats, but sometimes I don't
even know what the message format is (you know if it's text, but HTML
vs. RTF on an incoming message that you are replying to .... it's hard
to tell).

What's odd is that this just started a number of weeks ago. I don't
think it's a resource issue ... this is a fairly powerful machine with a
Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of memory and more than a terrabyte of disk space on
2 drives and 7 partitions. But there is nothing exotic going on ...
it's mostly used for Office and web browsing, there isn't anything
particularly demanding going on.

 

[DL]

You've checked Event Viewer?
Uninstalled/reinstalled the vid driver?
Used msconfig to disable all startups & tested
Then if the problem is repeated used msconfig to hide all ms services and
disable the rest

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Open the message - the format is listed after the subject in the title bar.

Disk space is not a cause - but Outlook tends to take all the ram available
and is supposed to release it, but sometimes doesn't. IE also tends to grab
ram and not let it go. Open up a another half dozen apps and you can be out
of resources after a few days- I have 4GB and 2 windows with Expression web,
1 IE with a lot of tabs, Outlook, LiveMail (for news), Word & Excel plus a
bunch of utilities can drag it to down when IE doesn't release memory.
Check Task Manager to see how much each open app is using. Look on the
Processes tab - you can add more columns using the View menu - I usually add
threads and objects but the default columns are all you really need.

Outlook should release excess memory when you minimize it, although I've
noticed that after 3 or 4 days, it doesn't release much when you minimize
it.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



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[Barry Watzman]

Re: "Open up a another half dozen apps and you can be out of resources
after a few days"

I turn this computer off when it's not in use. It is never running
without rebooting for more than about 12 hours (and, more commonly, 6
hours).