outlook 2000 hangs on any activity

[Roger]

I am running Outlook 2000 on an XP Pro machine. My pst file is now about
960K. I can open it but if I try to do anything, like check mail, open a
message or even switch to the calendar. It comes up not responding and
there is an extra Outlook showing in the Taskmanager applications tab (but
not in the processes tab) If I switch to an old backup of the pst file it
works.

My XP machine has 1G of memory and good hd space left.

Can a pst file be too big?

I put some messages in subfolders. Does this help?

Would I be better off to move messages into various archive folders?

 

[DL]

960k? thats not big
Locate scanpst.exe, a hidden file, and run it against your pst (with outlook
closed)

 

[Roger]

Thanks,

I actually had done that previously but scanpst said that it found no
problems. This time it found "minor problems" but I had it fix them and it
is working now.

The behavior was certainly strange, seeming to spawn additional instances of
Outlook.

How much can I depend on scanpst? I have always been a bit concerned that
Outlook is keeping all my eggs in one BIG BASKET. It seems that the chances
of loosing everything when one record is bad is high. I guess frequent
backups are in order.

Roger

 

[DL]

The data file is primarily a database, databases can corrupt, usually its
simply a case of rebuilding the index, which I believe is what scanpst does.
Its also the case that hd problems can cause such data problems.
MS Outlook site has a free backup addin, which allthough it may say for
2003, does I believe work on OL2k
Outlook 2003 and above uses a new format for its data file, unicode, it
doesnt have the size limitation of the earlier format.
You might also want to look at the Archive options