Today's outlook is poor

September 26, 2005 12:28 PM

Trouble with sluggish Outlook Express, it's hanging up my pc and being a general pain.

I use Outlook 6. I've already ran Adaware, Spybot, Registry Mechanic and AVG, with no bad results.

When a message downloads in Outlook it's being very sluggish, I can even hear the sound quaver, sort of a warble. While it's downloading my mouse pointer locks up.

Outlook is also sluggish when I switch between identities. It's been happening for a couple days now - I haven't downloaded any programs or files during that time.

Any ideas?

posted by LadyBonita to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

I have a similar problem, and I think it has something to do with the ZoneAlarm firewall since vsmon.exe starts eating up the CPU, but I can't figure out how to stop it.
posted by callmejay at 12:36 PM on September 26, 2005

Response by poster: hmm... I don't have Zone Alarm.
posted by LadyBonita at 12:55 PM on September 26, 2005

Outlook mail file too large? Maybe not so many emails, but enough emails with large attachments? Just a thought.
posted by mnology at 2:01 PM on September 26, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks for the thought. I'd considered that but most of the emails dont' have attachments or files. Just regular chatty mail from friends mostly.

I'm stumped.
posted by LadyBonita at 2:50 PM on September 26, 2005

Antivirus program scanning incoming mail slowly for some reason? If you have it set to also scan outgoing mail, try turning that off.

Or -- there used to be a "detect & repair" option in Outlook. Maybe try that?
posted by words1 at 3:09 PM on September 26, 2005

"In," "Out" and "Trash" mailboxes in OE should be kept small or empty. Try creating "Old Out" and "Old In" boxes and putting old mail there (or simply move mail to other mailboxes).
posted by words1 at 3:12 PM on September 26, 2005

Response by poster: Ok, I emptied the sent and trash boxes, compacted the rest. Will see if it helps.
posted by LadyBonita at 3:40 PM on September 26, 2005

I don't know if this applies to Outlook Express as much as it does Outlook, but if you've, somewhere, checked the checkbox that integrates Outlook with Instant Messaging, it's functional, but can really lag the system.
posted by thanotopsis at 7:45 PM on September 26, 2005

... Kind of off the beaten path to the answers we've seen so far, but if you're using Outlook Express as a POP3 email client, you may find that Thunderbird is a viable alternative. I've tried 'em all, to include OE, Outlook 2003, Eudora, Pegasus, etc., and TBird is easily the best. Just my $.02, but it comes highly recommended. Also, I'm pretty sure there are utilities / methods built into the app to import all your existing emails, so you won't lose anything.
posted by ZakDaddy at 10:24 PM on September 26, 2005

Response by poster: I'm not sure about the IM intergration thing, I'll look into it. And thanks ZakDaddy for the TBird reccomendation. I've bought a new pc and I'm seriously considering using TBird once I've set it up, especially since I didn't bother buying the package that includes Outlook. I already use Mozilla Firefox and couldn't be happier.

Thanks everyone for your input and ideas. Things are working better since deleting some mail and compacting. Could still use some improvement though.
posted by LadyBonita at 7:48 AM on September 27, 2005