Outlook Express Slow Start

[dickow]

Just recently my Outlook Express has decided to take about 2-3 minutes to open its main application window. I tried taking out the splash window but it still pauses for an awfully irksome long time. Note that sometimes it inexplicably starts up right away. Most of the time it just sits there for a couple of minutes before the window opens. I don't see any disk activity...my hard drive is defragmented, my email is in good shape and not corrupted that I can see...so what might be causing this? It never had this problem over the past 6 months until now (March).

Bob

 

[Lawtai]

did you remove msn messenger? if so how'd you remove it?

 

[dickow]

Ah...
I didn't remove it. It is currently running as usual. However, it seems I did install a recent upgrade, using the automatic update features that popped up. All seemed to go according to the book at the time.

 

[dickow]

Possible solution found

Ok, my face is a bit red, but I won't take all the blame.

I think my problem was related to having my system double firewalled. The XP IFW was enabled at the same time as my long-standing ZoneAlarm. Mind you, I had the XP firewall turned off for a long time. Some program decided to turn it back on. I know I never touched it.

In fact this is not the first time I have had my personal preference settings changed by something else and not me, thinking they knew better, or something. Recently Windows XP decided my much loved and long-running custom boot screen needed to be replaced by the original default. I never figured out what installation did that either.

Bob