Save password setting not retained in Outlook 2000 (Q290684)

[BillW50]

I run Windows 2000 Pro with Office 2000. My problem is that Outlook
2000 won't remember my saved passwords for my IMAP and POP3 email
accounts. I wish I could tell you which stupid software or crashed
caused this problem. But I usually only use Outlook 2000 about
twice per month for archiving email purposes. Normally I use AOL
Communicator most of the time and occasionally Outlook Express v6.
Both of them operate just fine.

I'm taking a wild guess here, but if I had to pick something that
may have caused it, I'd say first it was PeoplePC install software.
Don't worry, I only used it for 12 days and I removed it.

Below is Microsoft's Knowledge Base answer to the problem. All of
my below comments are indented with a "BW:" added to avoid any
confusion.

Save password setting not retained in Outlook
Article ID : 290684
Last Review : August 24, 2004
Revision : 1.0

This article was previously published under Q290684

Microsoft Windows 2000
Important Do not remove the main Protected Storage System Provider key.
This key is not automatically regenerated. If you are not having
password retention problems and you do not remember your password,
deleting the user subkey may result in not being able to retrieve your
mail.

Note If you are a Windows 2000 user, you must have administrator
permissions to edit the system registry.

1. Quit all programs.
2. Click Start, and then click Run.
3. In the Open box, type regedit32, and then click OK.

BW: I can't run regedit32, as it doesn't exist. I even did a search
for regedit32.* and it turns up nothing. Can run regedit.exe though.

4. Locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Protected Storage System Provider
5. On the Security menu, click Permissions.
6. Click the registry key for the user who is currently logged on and
make sure that both the Read and Full Control are set to Allow.
7. Click the Advanced button, verify that the user who is currently
logged on is selected, that Full Control is listed in the Permissions
column, and that This Key and Subkeys is listed in the Apply to column.
8. Click to select the Reset permissions on all child objects and enable
propagation of inheritable permissions check box.
9. Click Apply, and then click Yes when you are prompted to continue.
10. Click OK two times.

BW: I can't do 5 through 10 since I don't even get the Security
menu nor click on any permissions. Yet I am the administrator on
this home machine.

11. Double-click the Protected Storage System Provider key to expand the
key, click the user subkey folder that is directly below the Protected
Storage System Provider key, click Delete on the Edit menu, and then
click Yes in the warning message dialog box.

The user subkey folder looks similar to the following example:

S-1-5-21-124525095-708259637-1543119021-16701

Note For every identity that you have, there will be a subkey under the
Protected Storage System Provider key. To resolve this problem in all
your identities, you must delete all the user subkeys folders under the
Protected Storage System Provider key.

BW: Tried to delete subkey and it tries to, except it reports there
was an error and it cannot do so. Closed down AVG Resident Shield
and Ad-watch. No help. Tried booting Windows 2000 in safe mode and
still no help.

12. On the Registry menu, click Exit, and then restart your computer.

Anybody have any ideas what I should do now?

Thanks in advance,

Bill

 

[Vanguard]

3. In the Open box, type regedit32, and then click OK.

BW: I can't run regedit32, as it doesn't exist. I even did a search
for regedit32.* and it turns up nothing. Can run regedit.exe
though.


*** REPLY from Vanguard ***

regedit32.exe? Yep, no such file. Looks like a typo (for both Windows
2000 and Windows XP instructions). It should be regedt32.exe (notice
there is no "i" in that filename). Once you get the correct spelling,
you'll be able to perform the remaining steps.

Review that KB article and use the form at the bottom to report the
typo.

 

[BillW50]

"Vanguard" <see_signature> wrote in message


3. In the Open box, type regedit32, and then click OK.

BW: I can't run regedit32, as it doesn't exist. I even did a search
for regedit32.* and it turns up nothing. Can run regedit.exe
though.


*** REPLY from Vanguard ***

regedit32.exe? Yep, no such file. Looks like a typo (for both
Windows 2000 and Windows XP instructions). It should be
regedt32.exe (notice there is no "i" in that filename). Once you
get the correct spelling, you'll be able to perform the remaining
steps.

Review that KB article and use the form at the bottom to report the
typo.


*** REPLY from BillW50 ***

Wow! Thanks Vanguard! I love those easy fixes. I will report the
typo, thanks again.

Bill

 

[JB50]

Dear Vanguard and BillW50,

I have had the same problem running Outlook 2003 on WinXP Pro, tried your
suggestions, but still won't work. I tried a new clean install of WinXP Pro
and Office 2003 and encounter the same problem without loading any other
programs.

As you mention here, Article ID 290684 suggests for Win XP typing in
regedit32, which must be a typo. I then tried your suggestion of using
regedt32.exe and was then able to delete the user subkey folder. However,
that still doesn't fix the problem. When I configure my POP3 account with my
username and password and proceed to access email, I still get that annoying
message that I need to reenter the username and password again.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Vanguard]

Dear Vanguard and BillW50,

I have had the same problem running Outlook 2003 on WinXP Pro, tried
your
suggestions, but still won't work. I tried a new clean install of
WinXP Pro
and Office 2003 and encounter the same problem without loading any
other
programs.

As you mention here, Article ID 290684 suggests for Win XP typing in
regedit32, which must be a typo. I then tried your suggestion of
using
regedt32.exe and was then able to delete the user subkey folder.
However,
that still doesn't fix the problem. When I configure my POP3 account
with my
username and password and proceed to access email, I still get that
annoying
message that I need to reenter the username and password again.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Use their webmail page and make sure the username and password you are
using actually work.

Try the following to see that you can actually reach their mail server
and that it accepts your login credentials. To test the POP3 server:

telnet <pop3servername> 110
user <username>
pass <password>
list
quit

Did the authenticate (user and pass commands) return +OK status? Did
the list command do anything (even if it showed no messages but returned
an +OK status)? The POP3 protocol only returns 2 statuses: +OK and -ERR
(the comments after the status are optional and unpredictable). If the
authentication fails then the e-mail client will assume the username or
password were incorrect and presents you with the login popup. With
only an -ERR status, it hasn't a clue why the login failed.

Up the timeout setting in your e-mail client.

Check if you are getting lots of dropped packets. Run:

ping -n 100 <pop3server>

If your POP3 server has been configured to ignore pings the ping against
www.yahoo.com. The default of just 4 pings is not sufficient a sample
to reasonably measure how many packets are getting lost on average. See
how many packets are getting lost, if any. Lost packets have to be
retried and this causes delay which could accumulate enough of a delay
to trigger the client's timeout setting (and where some timers are
internal and cannot be adjusted via the user-available setting).

Make sure you are testing against the POP3 and SMTP servers on the
network to which you connect. That is, first test against your ISP's
mail servers. Your ISP might be blocking STMP traversing across their
network to some off-domain mail server, so you have to use THIER SMTP
server (but there is rarely that restriction for POP3). If that works
then try connecting to the off-domain SMTP server, if that is what you
use, and authenticate to it (setup your e-mail client to authenticate to
the SMTP server).

Disable your firewall and anti-virus e-mail scanning and then retest
logging into your e-mail account.

 

[CycleFitness]

I'm having this same frustrating problem. I just re-formatted my machine and
installed XP SP2 and Office XP with SP3. I get this maddening dialog every 3
minutes -- three times no less because I'm checking two email accounts.

I have tried following the steps in KB 290684. Don't work. Doesn't matter
whether you try regedit.exe or regedt32.exe -- neither will let me delete the
key mentioned whether I'm logged in as Administrator or not.

I'm having no problem getting my mail, once I provide the password. Just
tell me how to get it to recognize that I've checked the "save password"
checkbox. This is driving me crazy!

A side note. Outlook 2002 was installed and configured while logged in as
Administrator. I tried to set up my environment so that I would work on a
regular basis as a user with a "limited" account to help avoid malicious
installs. This backfired when I had to keep re-logging in as administrator
for the slightest of changes to my system. So, I changed my everyday user
account o have Administrator privileges and that's the account I use to log
into the POP3 mail server at Verizon. Don't know if this has anything to do
with it.

 

[BillW50]

I hope you are using the security menu under regedt32 (and not in the Windows security stuff) and then clicking on Permissions, etc. As if you don't do this, you can have Super Administrator privileges and it still won't let you change anything, I believe. And running regedit won't let you delete any user subkey folder, because you can't change any permissions in that registry editor. Well that is how it looks like it works to me.

Bill