slow startup

[chesjak]

Hi
Since instaling Office 2003 from 2002, I find that all programmes (ie word,
excel, outlook etc) start a lot slower than when I used Office 2002.

I am using exactly the same security as before.

When I asked this question specifically about Outlook, I seem to remember
someone saying to me something like that Outlook on startup was looking for
data files still saved in a 2002 file and to change the name of the file to
2003 or something. Could this be the reason and if so how do I go about it.

Could there be any other reasons?

Any help would be apreciated.

Regards

 

[DL]

No renaming a file wont help, and will in fact lead to more problems.
What size is your outlook data file - search to include hidden for *.pst and
report back

 

[chesjak]

Hi DL
Thanks for getting back to me.
I seem to have four files
Outlook Backup.pst 11921 Kb
Outlook.pst 6961 Kb
ArchiveBackup.pst 8945 Kb
Archive.pst 12665Kb
===========================================

 

[DL]

Just realised you said 'all' office programs run slow, how much ram (memory)
do you have?
Do you have any Anti Virus app that is intergrated with Office?
If you boot your PC into safe mode, how does Word or Excel now behave?

 

[chesjak]

Hi again

No antivirus integrated with Office. Use AVG v8 internet security.

Have 2Gb fast ram and Athlon 64x2 duel core 6400+ processor

When I boot in Safe Mode they behave the same.

I have noticed that when I start all the programmes within Office then shut
them down, the next time I start them up, they do start faster. I asume
because that is the way windows operates. However, Office still takes the
same time about 30 seconds before I can use it.

I also noticed that every time I open a file in Excel, the file is scanned
first.

Do you think there is a setting I haven't found in Outlook that I need to in
order to be able to tweak the settings or something.

As I said in my first post, This didn't happen when I used Office XP 2002

regard
===========================================

 

[DL]

If Excel is scanned prior to opening that would tend to indicate that your
AV has Office intergration (ie scanning any macros)
There are no Outlook tweaks, your pst is not large, but within Outlook,
select Personal Folders (Tree view), rt click Properties>Advanced, what does
it say for format, 97 - 2002 maybe?

You could also open Outlook using the safe switch
Run
Outlook.exe /safe ( note space between exe /)
How does it perform now? If much better then an outlook addin maybe slowing
things down

 

[chesjak]

Hi DL

yes it does say 97-2002

I tried using safe switch run option and I must say, it does start a bit
quicker. I stopped the "OUTLOOK BACKUP addin"

What effect on the system will this have?. Will it not do any backups
anymore?

Regards

 

[DL]

Stopping the Backup addin means backups will not be created, probably not a
good idea, nor will this addin slow things down

Since you upgraded 2002>2003 it might be prudent to create a new Profile via
the Mail Applet in the Control Panel - dont copy Profile, add a new data
file (in Default format), add the accounts & test, set it to prompt for
Profile
Start Outlook, check all is operational, then within OL, File>Open>Data
File.....select outlook.pst (your old data file)
Then copy data, if you want, to your new set of Personal folders (It will be
topmost set in tree view)
Dont forget to ammend your Archive settings to point to a 'newname'Archive,
it will be created when archive is run

You are using the old format data files, 2003 & later uses unicode format,
which doesnt have size limitation of the previous format, and is apparently
more robust.