Lots and lots of outlook.exes

[Rick Altman]

A new condition on my PC has allowed the presence of multiple outlook.exe
instances, as verified by Task Manager. Outlook itself does not complain,
but any routine that includes the creation of an email message (like
Acrobat's File | Email command, or Send To Email, or my database's Send Mail
function) will return the generic "The Operation Failed" error. I must close
Outlook and manually remove all of the extra instances to clear this error.
Sometimes, there will be as many as 15 extra instances running -- it's a
miracle that Outlook itself runs normally (seemingly).

My suspicion is that the offending application is either Blackberry's
Desktop Manager or Google Calendar Sync. Can anyone verify what is going on
here and suggest a solution? Many thanks...

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

It could be either.
http://slipstick.com/problems/close.asp

 

[Rick Altman]

Thanks, Diane --

I am aware of the issue with apps that prevent Outlook from closing and I am
familiar with the small apps discussed at the link you gave. I am not trying
to close Outlook; I just want to prevent multiple instances from starting. I
did not initially think that my problem was related, but perhaps it is. What
do you think?


Rick A.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

do you keep outlook open when the computer is running? I've never had a
problem with acrobat and others opening new instances as long as outlook was
running. When I close outlook, if something is keeping it open I can end up
with a lot of instances when I reopen it.

 

[Rick Altman]

Yes, that's what makes this different than the more common problem of the
program staying in memory after being closed. In this case, Outlook is open
(and behaving normally by all outward respects), but some condition is
causing a propogation of outlook.exe instances to the process list. And it
is the multiple instances that cause Send Mail commands in other apps to
fail.



Rick A.