When Outlook receives mail PC becomes very sluggish

[Tim]

When Outlook is receiving mail my PC becomes very sluggish. Outlook 2007
seems to have made it worse -- for example, typing text into another app
practically becomes impossible until Outlook 07 has finished receiving mail.
Doing anything within Outlook while it's receiving is impossible. Outlook
2003 did this, too, but I don't recall it preventing typing in other apps.

My PST file is 500MB. NOD32 AV software is scanning incoming mail. All
mail is POP3 with roughly 8 accounts. My PC is an Intel Core 2 Duo e6600. I
notice that Outlook is using both cores; I wonder if there's a way to change
the affinity so that it ties up only one of them. Besides that, I'm at a loss
on this. Any suggestions?

 

[K. Orland]

I would turn off AV scanning of incoming/outgoing email since that's not a
compromise to your security and can slow things down. You may also want to
change your polling frequence to not less than 10 minutes.

 

[Tim]

Thank you very much for responding, Kathleen.

This morning I exited NOD32 after running Outlook 07 and did not notice any
difference in Outlook 07's behavior. Later today I'll try disabling NOD32
before opening Outlook in case that makes a difference. I watched the
Performance Monitor while Outlook was running and while there are peaks at
100% most of the time the activity is lower. The CPU meter to the left of
the graphs indicates CPU utilization of around 5% to 10%, which doesn't
reconcile with the graphs.

That said, while Outlook is receiving email if I try doing anything within
Outlook, like selecting a new incoming message to see it in the Reading Pane,
nothing happens. So Outlook is clearly busy.

I reduced the polling frequency long ago because my ISP would generate
errors if I hit it too often.

I'll post results later after I try a few iterations of disabling NOD32.

BUT -- I'm curious as to the reasoning behind your suggestion that disabling
incoming/outgoing AV scanning will NOT compromise security. NOD32 regularly
discovers incoming viruses in email attachments.

Just wondering!! thanks again.

 

[K. Orland]

How many email accounts are you receiving for? Have you tried creating a new
profile for your email to see if the sluggishness persists with that profile?
Are you using any desktop search add on (which can slow Outlook to beyond
human endurance)?

 

[Tim]

Before installing Office 2007 (MAP Enterprise edition) I uninstalled Office
2003 Pro. I then installed Office 2007. Upon opening Outlook I found all
accounts present, all emails, etc. A quick restore of a Rules export was all
that I needed to do.

I've read that starting over with new profiles can fix some problems, but
since Outlook 2003 used to act pretty much the same way (almost useless while
receiving/sending) I decided this must be endemic to Outlook.

I may just copy my PST file to a clean system or VM with Outlook and see how
it opens and behaves without any pre-established accounts and without NOD32
-- to see if there's any change. I posted to this forum only because after
installing Outlook 2007 I was struck by how typing in Word was terribly
sluggish while Outlook is sending/receiving. Kind of like it's gone from bad
to worse.

Thanks for the helpful suggestions!

 

[K. Orland]

Do you have system feed synch enabled?

 

[Roundtrip]

Hello Tim,

Don't waste your time. This is a problem that the majority of Outlook 2007
POP email users are experiencing.

See:
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=54
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/index.php?s=outlook

Checkout the comments, that is where the really interesting reading can be
found.

I've been trying many of the suggested fixes and Outlook is just breaking
more and more.

The good news is that there is a workaround.... go back to Office 2003.

Sorry to not bear better news.


Regards

John
Roundtrip Solutions

 

[Tim]

I've never heard of "system feed synch". What is this and where is it
enabled? I opened Account Settings and see that there are two RSS Feeds set
up -- neither of which I did so I guess these are defaults preset by Msoft
("Microsoft at Home" and "Microsoft at Work"). If they're causing the
problem I can remove them. Pls let me know -- and THANK YOU for your help!

 

[Tim]

Thanks for the links. I'll read them. But I really don't want to switch back.
Outlook and the entire new Office suite -- especially OneNote -- have lots of
wonderful improvements that I want to USE.

 

[Tim]

I found the following article that discusses disabling RSS Feed support and
syncing function to which Kathleen referred.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2031/outlook_2007_remove_or_disable_rss_feed_support

I'll see how much of a difference it makes but Tim Anderson's excellent blog
that Roundtrip referred to is discouraging, though not enough at this point
to give up all the cool new features.

 

[Roundtrip]

Another users has found another solution. I've blogged about it and gave
appropriate recognition to him:
http://www.roundtripsolutions.com/b...em-with-outlook-2007-email-receive-is-broken/

Give it a go as it worked a treat for me. It seems to be a file corruption
that is occurring when people upgrade from 2003 to 2007.


Regards

John
Roundtrip Solutions