Problem with Outlook 2007 using 50% cpu

Could be Norton System works checking the client.
A conflict with Vista inbuilt email client.
Have you tried turning off the UAC?

Vista is a lot slower than xp and uses considerable more services.
http://www.nevillehobson.com/2007/04/17/windows-vista-rocks-mostly-but-outlook-2007-sucks/

Which AV are you running.
 Vista  includes Windows Mail, a totally overhauled mail client that might just be good enough to prevent you from having to buy or download something else.
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/archives/2007/05/microsoft_to_launch_another_em_1.html

Hope this helps you, I saw your comment in CSA  and have decided to try to help.
Jason will probably call in some more experts to assist you

Hi Merete and thanks for the reply.

>""Could be Norton System works checking the client.""<
Not running it.

>""A conflict with Vista inbuilt email client.""<
Possible but not much we can do there...

>""Have you tried turning off the UAC?""<
Yes, just tried that with no difference.

>""Vista is a lot slower than xp and uses considerable more services.
http://www.nevillehobson.com/2007/04/17/windows-vista-rocks-mostly-but-outlook-2007-sucks/""<
I'm certainly aware of the Vista complaints and issues. But personally I've been very happy with it.

>""Which AV are you running.""<
PC Tools Internet Security...but I turned it off, didn't help...and even uninstalled it with no help.

>""Vista  includes Windows Mail, a totally overhauled mail client that might just be good enough to prevent you from having to buy or download something else.
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/archives/2007/05/microsoft_to_launch_another_em_1.html""<

I have used the Windows Mail client included with Vista. It's OK but I do like Outlook for the ability to have so much info. in one screen. I need to write everything down to remember it so the integrated calendar and tasks is nice. I have not tried the new Live Mail, so I don't know the features too well.

I think next I might just try a re-install, but I don't hold much hope that will solve it. We'll see...

Thanks again,
Dave

Hope this helps you, I saw your comment in CSA  and have decided to try to help.
Jason will probably call in some more experts to assist you

    * Accept as Solution

Hi Merete,

I completely removed it and did a re-install with the same results. ???

This is a strange one. As long as I turn the reading pane off or don't open the message the CPU will not spike up. I can receive messages fine but it won't spike up until I open them.

I'll keep this open for a few days in case anyone else has any ideas and I'm going to try some things myself.

Thanks again,
Dave

OK Bingo....we have a winner! Never even thought of trying that. Now...next question, why? I've started in researching this also but if you have any ideas that would be great.

Thanks,
Dave

Well something ELSE I was not aware of (glad I'm trying this out as I've learned much here...). The emails are rendered using MS WORD! Not HTML as in the past.

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/01/10/microsoft-breaks-html-email-rendering-in-outlook/

So while that helps to understand things yet a LITTLE better I still don't know how the issue can be solved.

Once again thanks for all the help,
Dave

There's a lot of moans and groans about this "improvement" in Outlook '07.  One of the reasons why I try to steer my clients away from the Microsoft "treadmill".  It seems that the answer might be found in a search for Office03-Office07 workarounds.

For example:  Suppose someone were to do a custom install of Office 07, and select Outlook to be installed, but not Word.  What would happen?  Presumably there are library files which we think of as belonging to Word, but must still be installed to cope with such a weird combination in our Custom Installation.  The ideal answer would be that Outlook would switch to another "rendering engine", but I doubt it.  If it did, what would then happen if Word were subsequently installed?

Trouble is trying to replicate this, unless it is done on a virgin pc that has only the OS on it - uninstalling and then installing is not a fair test, as it may not remove everything originally loaded.

Thanks to both of you for the help, I appreciate it. I think we did the best we could with the situation that was given.

I do agree moorhouselondon, nice informative piece you wrote there too. Won't be long and office will be part of windows. More control.
Glad to see you found a solution Dave.
Cheers

I know this has been resolved but wanted to update here. I have been using the "view email as plain text" to resolve the issue. But thought after installing SP1 today I would try viewing back as HTML. What do you know? Issue resolved, no more CPU spiking. So looks like MS knew about it and had a fix...

Thanks again,
Dave

I had a situation where my Outlook 2007 used 80% of the CPU every few seconds, after investigating and disabling everything I found that Skype was causing the problem, whenever Skype was running the outlook CPU started to jump, in Addition, Skype started to consume all the memory (memory leak)

The solution to both problems was to remove a checkbox in Skype, under Contacts->Show Outlook Contacts

The hint was found here: http://i.nconspicuo.us/2007/12/21/outlook-2007-does-not-shutdown-on-exit-outlookexe-remains-in-task-manager/