Outlook stops respondng

[Rick J]

I have Outlook 2003 SP3 with Windows XP Pro. When I close Outlook, it looks
as if it has shut down OK, however when I try to open it again, I get an
"Operation Failed" error. I eventually learned to use Microsoft Application
Recovery to end Outlook, It shows up in that application as still running. If
I have responded to an email, Word also shows up in the list of applications
that are still running. Outlook generally takes less than a minute to close
out, however Word takes forever and maxes-out the CPU usage at 100%. This is
very frustating. It seems like this started a few weeks ago and seems to be
getting worse. Perhaps one of the updates from Microsoft has caused this.
Does anyone know how to fix this problem? Thank you.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Usually this is caused by an add-in that you have installed and that hijacks
the outlook.exe process. In your case it might also be hijacking the
winword.exe process.
To troubleshoot see;
http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/outlookdoesntclose.htm