Toolbars in Outlook blacked-out

[Jason]

We have a user who is running Office 2003 Professional with the Business
Contacts Manager on Windows XP Professional SP2. He generally has Outlook
open all day and uses it frequently. Occasionally in the afternoon, he will
switch over to Outlook and most of the toolbar space is blacked-out. Some of
the icons still show through and as he moves his mouse over them, they will
show up again, but the background of the toolbars remains black. If he
closes Outlook and reopens it, the toolbars display normally.

We've have reinstalled Office completely as well as apply all the available
updates for Windows and Office. We have alo updated the drivers for the
graphics card, but the issue continues. During these times, he does not seem
to be low on resources (his processor is not overly used and he has plenty of
available RAM - 2 GB installed).

I've read some about this issue a while back in Outlook Express, but it
seemed to be attributed to some bugginess in the program and users just lived
with it. I've never encountered this in Outlook on any other users'
computers. Any advice or help in resolving this problem would be greatly
appreciated.

Thank you,
Jason

 

[K. Orland]

Hi Jason,
Close Outlook. Search for the outcmd.dat file. You may have to unhide hidden
files and folders first. Rename the file. Open Outlook again. Let me know if
that helps or not.

 

[Jason]

Kathleen,

I renamed that file in his user profile and allowed Outlook to recreate the
file. I also uninstalled the Business Contacts Manager since this was not a
feature he was using. The computer seemed to work fine for a couple of days,
but the display issue with the toolbars has started occurring again.

Another thing that the user has noticed is that Outlook is using a lot of
memory. At one point Outlook was using around 225 MB when he only had the
main window, 4 or 5 emails, and the reminders window open. When the issue
occured this last time, Outlook was showing that is was using around 142 MB,
which still seems kind of high. As I mentioned before, the user has 2 GB of
RAM installed and almost never gets below 1 GB of available RAM, so this does
not seem to be a problem unless it is related to the display issue.

Please let me know if you have any more suggestions or steps I need to
perform in troubleshooting this issue. Thank you very much for your time and
help.

-Jason