Finally, I managed to get everything back and working. I was ready to turn the PC into a giant paperweight!
Seems like an update to AVG is the most likely cause but I can not be sure. Two days ago, my Outlook began acting weird. Better put, it started acting in a manner that rendered it completely useless. The last event likely to cause this was an update to AVG anti-virus.
I am still not 100% sure that AVG is the culprit but something, somewhere got dorked about the time of the update. Whatever it was and wherever it occurred really messed up Outlook.
Lumpy is a Pocket PC addict. He needs Outlook to work. Once the issue began, Outlook would simply open, prompt me that it could not open my default e-mail folder. I would ask me if I wished to open the file system folder instead. If I selected yes, it opened up the file system and then promptly closed the program.
Hmm. My first guess was to un-install Outlook and re-install it with the Anti-virus software not running. Results = zero; the same thing happened.
I guess the first suggestion from a Google search was not that great of one. Now the problem was worse. I had no idea where to go next. I tried booting Outlook in safe mode... same thing.
Next I found a few useful links on checking the pst files for being corrupt. They seemed fine but nonetheless, I attempted to rename them and let outlook recreate them. Again, useless.
This troubleshooting and searching for solutions took the better part of three hours. Searched solutions created new error messages. More searches led to more fixes. Seems like others have had problems similar but not quite identical.
In the end, I created a new profile and edited the registry. I am leery to go into all of the details regarding this because I am not certain "what" fixed "what". I am also hesitant to suggest to others the task of running regedit and changing things in it. Registry editing is not something non-power users should play with. If you are anyone you know has a similar problem. leave a comment here. I would be very interested in comparing what you did to what I did.
