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mclarkdatasimplicity

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Outlook hogs CPU, runs slow, acts strange after using Business Contact Manager

The short version: My copy of MS Outlook 2003 has become extremely slow, and constantly uses between 10% and 60% of my CPU at all times, even when it isn't really doing anything. In addition, if I have a calendar item that has a reminder set, and I uncheck the reminder box, when I close that calendar item, Outlook will make it a recurring, weekly item. No matter what I do from that point on, I cannot delete the recurrence. Outlook puts it back every time I save the item.

The details: I am using MS Outlook 2003, which I installed as part of MS Office Professional 2003. I don't use Outlook for mail. I use Eudora instead. I am using a new Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop, with a Core 2 Duo processor, T7200 @2.0 GHz and 2 GB of RAM. I am running Windows XP Professional version 5.1.2600.  I also use AirSet, an online calendaring system, and its AirSet Desktop Synchronization program, which synchronizes my Outlook calendar with AirSet's web version of my calendar. I don't think that the Airset Synch program is causing the problem, first of all because this whole setup worked fine on my desktop computer, and second of all because uninstalling the Airset Synch program didn't fix my problem now.

This entire arrangement seemed to work fine until I installed Outlook's Business Contact Manager last week. Then suddenly I started having all these problems.

Here are some of the gazillion things I have already tried in order to fix this. None of them has worked so far:

- Uninstalled Business Contact Manager and restarted my computer.
- Completely updated Office from MS Office Online. Installed everything available to make sure my copy of Office was up to date.
- Uninstalled MS Outlook, restarted my computer, re-installed Outlook (it never asked for my CD, so maybe it reinstalled from files in the Recycle bin?
- Got a backup copy of my Outlook.pst file from my old computer and replaced my current Outlook.pst file with that. All the problems are the same.
- Uninstalled AirSet Desktop Synch and rebooted my computer.
- Since I couldn't tell how thorough my uninstall of Outlook had been, I completely uninstalled Office, rebooted my computer twice (got 2 messages about needing to set up Bluetooth PIM???), and then installed Office from scratch from my CD. Then, once again, I went to Office Online and installed all available updates for Office.

I'm really stumped and frustrated. If I close Outlook down, my computer behaves normally. But with Outlook open and no other applications open, it slows my whole computer down. Often, if I click on a calendar entry in Outlook, it will take 5 to 15 seconds even to register that I clicked on that item. If I open up Windows Task Manager, I can watch the green bar go way up over 50% over and over again, even when I'm sitting here doing nothing at all. If I close Outlook, my computer goes back to behaving normally (and the green bar is way down low where it should be when my computer is idle). Sometimes, even the Windows Taskbar stops operating while Outlook is open (the clock doesn't update itself, and I can't click on any programs there,, although I can CTRL+Tab to get from one program to the next.

Anybody have any clues on this? I'm really stumped.

Thanks,

M
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mclarkdatasimplicity

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I just remembered something else: I remember that my computer came with some version of SQL Server installed. I remember that Outlook's Business Contact Manager (before I uninstalled it) seemed to be connecting to SQL Server. Now that I've installed and uninstalled so many things, SQL Server doesn't seem to be on my computer anymore. I'm wondering whether or not that might be causing the new problems, but I'm not sure how to re-install SQL Server if it needs to be re-installed?

Thanks again,

M
try running outlook with the following command:

outlook.exe /safe

That will load outlook without any extensions.  If it runs fine in safe mode, then you probably have an extension that is causing your problem.
If you have any indexing programs such as lookout, windows desktop, or google desktop, disable them to see if you get better results.
Dear jared_luker,

Thanks for the suggestions. I just tried running Outlook in safe mode. Unfortunately, it runs just as badly as in regular mode. Are there other things I can try now that we know this?

Also, I did once have Google desktop (or at least the option of installing it) and I uninstalled whatever was there. I don't have windows desktop, or lookout, or any other indexing programs that I know of. You did just remind me, though, that when I first installed Business Contact Manager, it seemed to be trying to index a bunch of stuff, and it slowed to a horrible crawl at the time. Somehow it still almost acts like it's trying to index something and it just can't do it. I've noticed that if I watch "Outlook.exe" in the Windows Task Manager, it cycles through about 0% of the CPU, then 5%, then around 35%, around 42%, around 35%, back down to 5%, and back down to 0% for a few seconds. It's not always the same exact percentages, but it seems to cycle over and over, the same cycle about every 8 or 9 seconds. Up to anywhere from 35% to 60%, then back down to zero again, then up again, then down again. Does this give any clues? Is there any way we can get Outlook to tell us what it's trying to do during these cycles where it hogs so much CPU time?

Thanks,

M
umm... I can't think of any way to tell direclty.

You could download filemon from sysinternals and you could see what files outlook as accessing, but I'm not sure how useful that would be to resolving your issue.

I'm not sure what internal function in outlook would be doing that with your cpu.  It seems that there would be some sort of external force in play.

You could use msconfig to do a basic startup which would prevent any other programs from loading, and then do an outlook /safe to see if it behaves the same.  If you don't have the problem in that case, then it would be down to determining which process is causing outlook to have to work so heavy handed.
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