outlook 2007 non repsonsive with antivirus installed

[Bob]

i have a problem that is driving me nuts. i have office 2007, windows vista
64. occassionally (maybe once a month or so) outlook would become
non-responsive meaning you could not do anything. it would not display a
message in the reading pane. i discovered that if i disabled email scanning
in my antivirus software that the problem went away. then i could re-enable
email scanning and things would be fine
yesterday morning however when the problem reoccurred i discovered that as
soon as i re-enable email antivirus scanning that outlook becomes non
responsive. i had been using shield 2008 (kaspersky labs). i talked to them
about it. they said i had to make sure there were no pieces of other anti
virus software on the machine, and to upgrade to their 2009 version. same
result. so i then uninstalled this product and downloaded mcafee and got the
same result. so i am now thinking i have problem with outlook. i have
disabled windows defender as well to try to eliminate any possibility of
conflicts. the cpu usage goes up to about 50%. i have also discovered if i
turn off the reading pane i can generally work with my email. as soon as the
reading pane is turned then things go the hell quickly. i even went so far as
to create a new personal folder and have all my in mail delievered to that -
just in case there was a problem with my old PST file. l checked the size of
the pst and it is only about 22MB. any suggestions would be greatly
appreciated

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Disabling the virus scanner's integration with Outlook was the correct step;
don't go any further or have it re-integrate again. They are a known source
of causing issues like these (and even more!) and they offer no additional
level of protection anyway. As long as you have your on-access scanner
running and leave the default Outlook security settings; you're fine.

At the same time disable any additional Office and Internet Explorer
integration as well for the same reason as above.

 

[Bob]

Robert,

thanks. i guess i was under the assumption that if i did not have an
antivirus program scanning my outlook email i was at a high risk. i do now
run windows defender and let the anitvirus scan files on my computer but at
this time am not using it to scan email. i am still pretty nervous though.

 

[Bob]

what is most upsetting about this issue is that it does not seem to occur
with 2003, only 2007. i can't seem to find anything in the MS knowledge base
about it.