Outlook 2003 Slowness Revisited

Author: Jason

31 Mar

Okay, I’m doing it. I’ve known that there was something wrong with my MS Office 2003 installation for some time now; when I tried to install the first Service Pack, the installation failed, and from that point forward, I was unable to make any configuration changes to the setup of Office. The tip that I pointed to here requires you to turn off some options in Office’s setup, and since I can’t do that, it’s time I really fixed my installation.

I know, I know - how could I possibly leave it this long? I don’t really know. It’s mainly the prospect of having Outlook unavailable to me while uninstalling and reinstalling that has freaked me out. Addicted much?

Anyhow, Outlook slows down steadily, and relatively quickly these days over the course of about 2 hours to where it becomes unusable. I need to find the cause, and making sure I’m patched up to the latest Service Pack is the first step. Wish me luck!

And no, Chris, it’s not the plugins! (I hope.)

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Brad 3 years ago 1 point
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Do you minimize Outlook when you aren't using it or do you ALT-TAB back and forth to it? There's a known "feature" in 2003 that will cause it to slow down.

From slipstick.com (http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2003.htm):

"Get in the habit of minimizing Outlook 2003 rather than just using Alt-Tab or a Windows task bar button to switch to another program. If you leave the full Outlook 2003 window active, it may use so much memory that it stops responding. See Outlook 2003 Stops Responding After a Long Period of Use: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=827310

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Jason 3 years ago 1 point
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Brad, thanks for the tip. I remember reading about it ages ago, and I guess I assumed that it would be fixed in later service packs. I use multiple monitors, so I do tend to leave it maximized. I can't believe there's no mention of fixing this behaviour in the support article you linked to... they just state that this is how it works. Bizarre!

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Zane-O 2 years ago 1 point
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Looks like your "multi-monitor leave Outlook maximised all the time" lifestyle is the problem.

See the following article about the issue from Microsoft.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=827310

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josh 1 year ago 1 point
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I had the same problem with Outlook 2003 becoming too slow to use.

I think I've narrowed the problem down to disk access.

It was taking several seconds to switch folers, and deleting an email could take a second or two also. I moved the PST file onto a RAM disk and now Outlook is humming.

I used this...

http://www.superspeed.com/servers/ramdisk.php

...but any RAM dirve should work.

It takes a lot of RAM (you'll need as much ram as the size of your PST file), and it is dangerous becuase if you have a power failure or crash, you'll loose any changes since the last backup, but if you live on Outlook the change can make you much more productive.

-josh

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http://josh.com