[ms office - 2007] Outlook 2007 Crashing repeatedly

[maniac]

Ever since upgrading to office 2007 SP1 we've been getting some very strange behaviour on ocassions from outlook. It tends to happen if I reset a users network profile for whatever reason, although not exclusively as it does sometimes randomly happen for no apparent reason.

 

What happens is when outlook it run for the first time on the new profile, it runs through its normal wizard to connect to our exchange server, then promptly crashes and gives you the option to restart the program, which it does sucessfully but minus the preview window. As soon as I turn the preview window on, the program will freeze up and crash again, and keep doing this repeatedly if I either open an e-mail or turn on the preview window. The only remedy to solve it seems to be a completely un-install and re-install of office, which solves the problem - outlook then works fine. Note it has to be un-installed, simply doing a repair installation doesn't work!

 

This problem is driving me mad, as I'm getting 2 or 3 laptops a week now suffering from it, and I'm fed up un-installing and re-installing office everytime! There must be a solution out there somwhere, but I can't find it! Has anyone else experienced this problem and has anyone got any ideas on how to solve it without completely re-installing the program from scratch everytime??

 

Note: The problem is tied to the machine, not the user. Once a machine starts suffering from this problem, any user that logs onto that machine will have trouble.

 

Many thanks,

 

Mike.

Edited May 7, 2008 by maniac

[gshaw]

Hmmmm did you upgrade from Office 2003? Sometimes if any bits get left behind it causes havoc for 2007. Might be worth downloading the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility here...

 

Description of the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility

 

To see if there's any 2003 bits still listed.

 

Btw how did you install Office 2007 to the machines e.g. install from CD, GPO etc?

[GlennT]

Hi,

I had this problem recently and found that disabling RSS feeds in Outlook corrected the problem.

Cheers,

Glenn.

[FN-GM]

Sounds an odd problem we have never had this. Saying that we don't use the wizard a script configures outlook automatically.

[maniac]

Thanks for the replies.

 

RSS feeds are turned off, this is a user specific setting anyway, but the problem seems to be tied to the machine, once it starts doing it on a particular machine, then it will affect all users on that machine.

 

Office was installed from the CD onto one machine, then our laptops are imaged using WDS. The image was of course syspreped before hand in the usual way. Office 2007 SP1 was rolled out by my WSUS server, it only seems to have become a problem since SP1 was installed on the machines. Still puzzling me this one is!

 

Any other ideas??

 

Incidently I installed XP SP3 on my machine today, and it it seems to have sped up office 2007. Not sure if this was just my imagination thou?

 

Mike.

[GlennT]

Does this help?

After you upgrade Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007, Outlook 2007 crashes when you start the program

[gshaw]

Also something I had yesterday, Outlook runs the startup wizard, you see the box for name \ initial come up but then it disappears and Outlook crashes. Workaround fix is to go into Word \ Excel, fill in the name details, close then start Outlook again and all works normally.

[Gatt]

Had issue with Outlook 2007 and SP3 freezing when trying to read emails

Had to disable the Chached Exchange Mode and it worked fine after that

[maniac]

Eventually found the solution to my troubles! - http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3331615&SiteID=17 describes a simelar problem to what we were having, freezing up and crashing, and the suggestions in the last post worked.

 

Removing the Windows Security Update KB946983 solved all the problems I was having! Apparently Microsoft Hotfix 950282 also patches against this problem, so if anyone else gets the same or simelar problem, there's a solution!

 

Mike.