Outlook slowdown - 5/10 minutes to startup

[steve m]

Everything was fine for years, then suddenly it just started taking 5 to
10 minutes to start up. It's literally "go away and make a cup of coffee"
- that's what I do.

I tried everything I could think of, searched help, google ...etc... nothing
worked. I tried taking away the pst file and making it work with a completely
empty one. It took just as long to start. I bought a new state of the art
pc and transferred my stuff over, thinking "this will do it" - but horror,
even after upgrading to Office 2003, and rebuilding the pst to the new database
format, Outlook still takes 5 to 10 minutes to start.

I think this started happening the day I installed some Sony-Ericcson software
for a new mobile phone (a few monts ago) on my old system, so I uninstalled
all of that but still the same.

After running for a while Windows always comes up with the warning "Virtual
Memory too low - increasing page size". But I've tried every bit of help
and every setting imaginable with System / Virtual Memory settings and nothing
makes any difference. Anybody got any ideas what the problem might be?

desperately yours,
steve m (london)

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

try a new profile to see if it helps.

 

[steve m]

thanks, but even creating a new profile and setting it as default didn't
make any difference.

the "File...Edit...View...etc" menu still comes up below the button menu,
for example, which has been happening since the slowdown, even though I always
drag them back into place.

i find on timing it that i have exaggerated a little as it's only three minutes
to start up on my new machine, but on a Pentium D with 1 gb of memory etc
etc this is still pretty bad.

any more ideas?

steve

 

[Sparks]

Everything was fine for years, then suddenly it just started taking 5 to
10 minutes to start up. It's literally "go away and make a cup of
coffee" - that's what I do.

I tried everything I could think of, searched help, google ...etc...
nothing worked. I tried taking away the pst file and making it work with a
completely empty one. It took just as long to start. I bought a new state
of the art pc and transferred my stuff over, thinking "this will do it" -
but horror, even after upgrading to Office 2003, and rebuilding the pst to
the new database format, Outlook still takes 5 to 10 minutes to start.

How big is your .PST file?