Problem with Outlook 2007 – Email Receive is Broken!
Read all the post and comments before doing anything!
As people start to use Outlook 2007, there is an alarming pattern starting to emerge regarding performance issues when receiving POP3 email. Even the smallest and most trivial of emails can take ages to download and be available, ranging from 30 seconds to minutes. During this time, Outlook and Windows can become slow to respond or become completely unresponsive, usually returning to normal when the send/receive cycle has completed.
One of the first things to try is to run the Office Diagnostics, with the hope it finds the problem and fixes it automatically. In Outlook this is easily achieved by:
Help -> Office Diagnostics
In the early days of this problem people thought the performance degradation was down to Microsoft’s implementation of the AUTH command, which seems to be missing a parameter. This omission by Microsoft is specified in RFC 1734.
Our own investigation, along with the assistance of people like Steve Foster (a Microsoft MVP), reveal this isn’t part of the performance problems as it doesn’t slow down the receiving of emails at all. We enabled logging to see what was going on with the server and it may also be worth your while putting Outlook into logging mode and inspecting if the delay is down to the server communication or whether it is down to Outlook’s processing of the email once it is received. It is easy to do this, within Outlook:
Options -> Other -> Advanced Options -> Enable logging (troubleshooting) – tick it
Accept everything to get back to Outlook’s normal windows then close down Outlook and restart. All your email send/receive sessions will be logged in a file located on your main Windows drive, which if it was the C drive would look like this:
C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Temp\Opmlog.log
Our typical log is shown below. The time it takes to connect, download and disconnect should be about the same time as you observe physically.
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Port: 995, Secure: SSL, SPA: no
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Finding host
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Connecting to host
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Securing connection
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Connected to host
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): +OK Hello there.
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Authorizing to server
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): [tx] AUTH
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): -ERR Invalid command.
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): [tx] USER me@myemailaddress.com
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): +OK Password required.
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): [tx] PASS *****
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): +OK logged in.
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Authorized to host
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Connected to host
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): [tx] STAT
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): +OK 0 0
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): ==== Comparing server and local blobs ====
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): ==========================================
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Do deletions: LoS: no
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): ========= No blob changes =========
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): ===================================
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Disconnecting from host
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): [tx] QUIT
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): +OK Bye-bye.
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): Disconnected from host
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): ========= No blob changes =========
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): ===================================
2007.02.17 11:39:40 POP3 (myserver.com): End execution
2007.02.17 11:39:40 Email Account Name: ReportStatus: RSF_COMPLETED, hr = 0×00000000
2007.02.17 11:39:40 Email Account Name: Synch operation completed
Untick the Enable Logging option, exit Outlook and restart to disable logging to the file.
The incorrect usage of the AUTH command has been raised with Microsoft by us. Hopefully we’ll see this syntax error being fixed in a future update / service pack.
It can be seen the whole receive cycle took less than a second, but it took another 30 seconds for the email to come into the inbox. All during this time, the hard drive light was on solidly indicating sustained disk access. Now that is a big clue to the real root cause of the problem.
More recently people have been starting to look towards the size of PST files, which are the files used to store the data and emails within Outlook. Undoubtably, the size of PST files are now affecting Outlook performance when using Outlook 2007. Microsoft have released a knowledge base article on this topic:
We tried splitting our 900MB PST main file into multiple smaller ones, with the biggest PST now being about 600MB, but this didn’t fix the performance issues. A small improvement was noticed but it was still taking an eternity for emails to reach the inbox.
When performing the PST management / cleanup, it is important to reduce your file size as much as possible by moving emails/folders to other PSTs, deleting whatever you don’t need and emptying the deleted items folder before compacting the older (fatter) PST files. Compacting is essential as it reclaims the free space, although it may take some time on large PST files:
File->Data File Management -> (select a PST data file) -> Settings -> Compact Now
Leo Notenboom has an excellent article on reducing the size of your PST files and performing the clean-up afterwards. He explains everything you need to know to perform this stage of the fixing attempt.
Likewise, the following suggestions were made as potential fixes by various people in the Microsoft Outlook Discussion Forum:
2. Turn off various “Options” to improve performance – see below
4. Disable RSS sync feed – we use a separate RSS aggregator anyway
None of those fixes affected the poor performance for us.
We also uninstalled the recently installed Windows Desktop Search 3. It got installed during the set-up of Outlook 2007. It seemed to make a small different to the performance.
Still experiencing problems with Outlook 2007 we tried restarting Outlook in safe mode:
Start -> Run -> outlook /safe
Our Outlook ran much better when in safe mode! This usually indicates a configuration data corruption problem or a misbehaving add-in/plugin. In our case, it looks like a big part of the problem can be put down to file corruption when upgrading from Office (Outlook) 2003 to Office (Outlook) 2007.
Shane Keller has offered the following general solution on the Microsoft Outlook Discussion forum, which has been refined through feedback by other users as they implement it:
STEP 1: Turn off Outlook 2007 and locate each of these files in turn and rename as indicated.
For some reason, during the upgrade these four files can become corrupted – the migration from 2003 to 2007 isn’t the smoothest but not having to create all your POP3 accounts again is excellent.
1. extend.dat – you will find this file in the location | Drive Letter:\Documents and Settings\user-directory\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\extend.dat
//change it to extend.old
A user has reported that this file was the only thing that he needed to rename, so at this point try restarting Outlook normally and see if it has improved. If no difference has been made then rename the new version of the extend.dat as extend.old2 and continue on with the remaining files.
2. views.dat – may not find it most of the time
3. frmcache.dat – Drive Letter:\Documents and Settings\user-directory\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\FORMS\FRMCACHE.DAT
//change it to FRMCACHE.old4. outcmd.dat – C:\Documents and Settings\user-directory\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\outcmd.dat
//change it to OUTCMD.oldSTEP 2: Restart Outlook 2007
1. Send yourself some test emails and watch the messages appear.
This made a big performance improvement to our version of Outlook 2007.
To summarise, during the fault diagnosis of Outlook 2007 we did the following:
- Created a new mail profile
- Recreated the account settings
- Imported old PST
- Created new PSTs (x5) and sorted email from the main PST into those
- Compacted the main PST
- Removed the old profile
- Uninstalled Windows Desktop Search 3
- Disabled plugins
- Turned off various options
- Renamed the Outlook configuration files outlined above
Knowing what we know now, our recommendation is to try safe mode as one of the first things in faulty finding Outlook problems. It could save you so much time and effort.
After getting Outlook 2007 working, Windows Desktop Search 3 has now been reinstalled to evaluate the overall impact on the performance issues. Initial impressions are favourable, with no noticeable impact by reinstalling and using Windows Desktop Search. It was later uninstalled again due to the system running poorly. Windows XP certainly runs smoother when Windows Desktop Search 3 is uninstalled.
It is also worth pointing out that Business Contact Manager was never installed at any time! Perhaps this is something else that needs further exploration by those still having performance issues with Outlook 2007.
Mike Bisson has posted a comment on Tim Anderson’s blog that offers a fix for Outlook 2007 performance issues when running on Vista:
Go to Programs -> Accessories and right click on command prompt and select “run as administrator”
Then type in the following:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable
Quarrel commented on a problem with Outlook rules and offered a fix involving upgrading the rules to work in the new Outlook 2007 format.
“Discovered that in Tools->Rules&Alerts->Options there is an “Upgrade Rules” option (I’d upgraded my 8Gb pst from 2003).
Upgrading my rules took about 1 second and FIXED my problems. (I had about 100 local rules)”
To summarise a further Vista issue that was pointed out by Marc, it is possible for legacy network hardware to cause issues with receiving of emails. Further, it is worth pointing out that both Vista and Longhorn Server have a new network TCPIP stack which will undoubtably break some existing network devices. Vendors are releasing new firmware and drivers to account for this redesigned network stack, hence it will be worth checking for updates for your network hardware.
Rob March commented on the nature of the steps he took to get things fixed and added another option to our list of things worth trying:
“I also did a SCANOST and SCANPST on the data files that makeup my mailbox which seemed to help too.”
Further issues and fixes with Outlook 2007 can be found HERE.
Note that Office 2007 Service Pack 1 is now available and it fixes a load of bugs and performance issues. Doesn’t make Outlook perfect by any means, but it does make enough of a difference to make it an immediate recommendation.
More solutions to the performance issues to follow as we get them. We will also be editing this posting to reflect new information and to improve suggestions for diagnosing and fixing Outlook 2007 POP email issues.
Technorati Tags: bug, error dialog, fix, IT, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Outlook, performance problems
February 19th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Hello,
I have a new install of Outlook 2007 on a new Install of Vista Ultimate and have POP3 trouble.
POP3 mail takes forever (if it comes at all). The proposed solution above is not applicable to my situation. Thanks.
Steve
PS. I will keep following to see if there is a solution for my situation.
February 19th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Hi Stephen,
What happens if you start Outlook in safe mode?
I’ve editted the posting to show the steps to do this?
Microsoft are very keen to get to the bottom of the POP email problems as it is a show stopper for many users.
Regards
John
February 20th, 2007 at 3:30 am
Opening plaintext e-mails is fast and responsive but opening e-mails with attachments (or right clicking them) causes a delay of up to 30 seconds before they open. (I had a similar problem with Outlook 2003 which was traced to Handwriting and Voice recognition.) The problem goes away if I start outlook in safe mode. Making Shane’s fixes has improved startup time by about 500%.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Hello Dave,
Thanks for the feedback. Another users has indicated that he only need to rename the extend.dat file as doing the remaining steps made things worse.
I’ve updated the posting to reflect this new found knowledge.
Regards
John
February 20th, 2007 at 11:57 am
I’ve now turned back on just about all the options that were turned off when suggested by MVP and others and Outlook is still performant.
This really looks like a multiple bug issue that are manifesting as performance problems.
February 21st, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I tried everything above, although my .pst is still 1.4GB, it is still insanely slow. Outlook flashes on and off “Not Responding” at the top, so I suspect it is try to do something it should not be, but indexing is off, and I removed all the add-ins I could. It works fine in Safe Mode, further leading me to think something is running inside Outlook that should not be.
It is amazing that I upgrade from Outlook 2000 and XP to Vista and Outlook 2007 and take a massive step back in performance, really bad on Microsoft’s part, they should not have released the product with a problem this severe.
February 22nd, 2007 at 1:40 am
Hello Bernard,
I was in the same horrible place a few weeks ago but going through all the advice in the blog I’ve now managed to get a working set-up. I know it isn’t much compensation for those of you still struggling with it.
This sounds like a misbehaving plugin or a corruption of configuration data.
You can disable all the plugins and then re-enable them one at a time. Temporarily disable AV plugins and antispam as well.
Maybe you can try this:
Before starting Outlook, delete the “Shane” files as detailed above.
Start Outlook in safe mode, then exit and restart normally.
Let us know how you get on.
Regards
John
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:08 am
John,
Thank you for the tips, I’ll give them a try. I have been running in safe mode with no problem.
Bernard
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:24 am
After installation of Office 2007 in Vista 32bit ultimate, I had the problem described above… It used to take about 3 seconds to send/receive about 6 POP3 e-mail accounts using outlook 2003, but as soon as the upgrade was complete it was taking a couple of minutes to do a send/receive, during which time outlook 2007 became unresponsive.
I must admit that I have a large pst file (3.1GB), so suspected that this was the problem (as described above).
I ran the Office Diagnostics (1st step above), and although whilst running it said that it didn’t find any problems, at the end it said that it had found 1 problem which it had solved (didn’t give any more info than that). Since running the diagnostics, however, outlook 2007 has been working fine… send/receive as quick as it used to be, and no hanging. I didn’t have to take any further steps.
Maybe it’s just luck!!
Cheers,
Chris.
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:37 am
Hello Chris,
Yes, there seems to be a wide range of issues that are causing performance problems. Luckily, you’ve had a “luck escape” by having one that could be fixed by the diagnostic tool.
Thanks for sharing the information. Microsoft are watching
.
Regards
John
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:02 pm
John,
Tried it all, still slow other than in Safe Mode. There are some plug-ins I cannot take out.
This product is really a disaster.
Bernard
February 23rd, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Which add-ins were you unable to disable?
Even when it appears to be working fine you get the odd glitch!
Disaster may be too good a term for it
.
Regards
John
February 23rd, 2007 at 8:35 pm
John,
I think I finally got it to work, I could not uninstall some of the add-ins from the Trustcenter (HKEY problem) so I used regedit.exe to delete all the addins from the dll. Now performance looks to be fine.
Thank you,
Bernard
February 23rd, 2007 at 10:32 pm
That’s very good news Bernard. Seems like there are loads of add-ins that are causing problems with 2007, including the Microsoft ones!
February 26th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
[...] Problem with Outlook 2007 – Email Receive is Broken!19 February 2007 [...]
February 27th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
The presence of AUTH causes my e-mail server to end the connection (Ipswitch IMail Server connection with POP3) when I try to connect with Outlook 2007. Is there any option to remove this AUTH command ?
March 1st, 2007 at 10:17 am
There isn’t an option to remove the AUTH command AFAIK. I’ll ask Microsoft and see what they say. The suspicion is that we will need to wait for a fix.
However, it should be fixed much quicker now that we have an identified this as a show stopper with a specific server.
Thanks for this very important feedback.
Regards
John
March 3rd, 2007 at 7:18 am
So,
Finally people are taking notice of my post LAST YEAR!
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Ring0
KeBugCheck(42);
March 3rd, 2007 at 9:00 am
Ring0,
What post would that be? Did you report the problems you experienced to Microsoft? If you don’t tell them directly then there is little chance that they will fix bugs!
Most people are experiencing the problems for themselves and attempting to find solutions where they can be found. It bring them to blog postings like this one and Tim Anderson’s very popular postings on Outlook.
It was only once we received Office 2007 in our January Action Pack update that we installed the troublesome Outlook 2007 and started to feel frustrated. We didn’t expect Outlook 2007 to be so troublesome considering the amount of beta testing it alledgedly underwent!
After speaking to people at Microsoft they ensured a channel was made available to report bugs. They are just as keen to make their products good ones but need people to report problems.
Regards
John
March 6th, 2007 at 7:55 am
My feedback,
removed extend.dat, but didn’t seem to clear it up. Started in /safe mode. Didn’t seem to work.
Discovered that in Tools->Rules&Alerts->Options there is an Upgrade Rules option (I’d upgraded my 8Gb pst from 2003). Upgrading my rules took about 1 second and FIXED my problems. (I had about 100 local rules)
I had massive delays on each POP3 fetch, where the GUI for windows would basically hang.
Fixed!
Thanks for help. Good luck.
–Q
March 7th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
I have the same problem with the AUTH command in combination with a Mercur Mailserver 2005…
I think I have to be patient for a fix/update as D Bolak??
Greetings,
W
March 8th, 2007 at 12:40 am
The last fix by Mike Bisson resolved the problem for me at least.
Thank you for the info
March 8th, 2007 at 12:52 am
I work helpdesk and I have received nothing but calls about how slow Outlook 2007 is, and how slow their systems are. I spoke with MS and paid my 245.00 just to have them tell me to disable everything that makes it awesome. Please, please don’t cripple your users by installing Outlook 2007. I’ve heard of all of these tricks and tried deleting dats, re-creating profiles, all of it. I still have to try /safe, but still, we can’t do without our vaulting add-in, even if that is the issue! Sorry to vent! Thanks for the blog
March 8th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Quarrel: Thanks for the fix on the rules issue. Will add this to the guide with appropriate attribution. I’ll also send this information onto Microsoft to see if they can do something in a future update / service pack.
Wouter VH: I’ve informed Microsoft of the AUTH command problem with Mercur Mailserver 2005. Hopefully we’ll get a fix for this soon as more email servers show this to be a show stopper.
Sloooows: I’ll send your comment to Microsoft as this is the common impression from a load of users! The more they hear this, the better the chances we’ll get it fixed SOON!
Thanks everyone. Keep the comments coming. I’m passing along the information to Microsoft and it won’t cost you $245.00 (or is that £’s) to do it.
March 11th, 2007 at 9:16 am
I am also having the slow/error POP download issue with Ipswitch’s IMAIL Server.
I used POP download with my GMAIL account and it is lightning fast.
It seems this affects only certain Mail Servers.
March 12th, 2007 at 6:13 am
I tried everything suggested and nothing worked. I just created a new profile, and so far it seems to have done the trick. (Fingers crossed.)
March 12th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Ruben: Thanks. I’ve sent off your feedback to Microsoft. Hopefully they will fix the AUTH problem sooner rather than later.
Ozzie: Glad you got things working. Unfortunately, Outlook seems to be steadily getting worse again for me! I suspect another new mail profile will be needed as all the simple fixes have so far failed to cure all! Ggrrrr!
New blog posting could be coming soon about Outlook corrupting its own data files! But first I need to figure out what is really going on.
March 13th, 2007 at 4:07 am
Finally!!! This all worked for me. Turning off RSS feeds seemed to be the first big step. After that, renaming the files to .old, and regenerating them helped. I also did a SCANOST and SCANPST on the data files that makeup my mailbox which seemed to help too.
March 16th, 2007 at 3:25 am
Thanks for all the tips here, I’ll throw in my 2 cents. I followed the tips – new profile, disabled addins, renamed exend.dat – and all is working as I had originally expected. I’m thinking the main thing was creating a new pst and importing from the old one. I probably should not have been so cavalier about expecting my 2003 pst to just automatically work in 2007.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Hi thanks for the hard work. I also noticed in perfmon.exe that whenever Outlook goes slow, the Avg Disk Queue length is up high, does that suggest anything to you?
March 20th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Hello Paddy,
No problem. There are loads of people working very hard to make Office 2007 just as good as 2003. Microsoft will eventually get there!
With regards to the AVG disk queue length issue, this backs up the high disk usage by Outlook 2007 while processing incoming pop email. Microsoft even admit to this in various knowledge base articles. The new Outlook 2007 architecture, that sees high disk utilisation, plays a substantial part in the complete system slowdown. A fix will be required to reduce this high disk utilisation IMHO. It may not turn out to be an easy fix for Microsoft to devise and push out.
Hope that makes some sense.
Regards
John
March 21st, 2007 at 5:30 am
The weirdest thing happened today…
I had pretty much given up on a solution to the POP 3 Dowloand problem with my Office 2007 Outlook and Vista and all of a sudden it started working fine about 4 hours ago.
I made no changes on my side. I checked installed updates and there was nothing added in the past few days.
So to summarize, about a week after a fresh install of Vista and Office 2007 my POP 3 emails from an IMAIL server started to go very slowly or not at all. After 3-4 weeks of this happening constantly, all of sudden today the problem is cured on its own.
I have no idea. I wish I could contribute something to help others. No changes were made on the IMAIL server either because I’m the one who would have done it.
March 21st, 2007 at 10:03 am
Hey Ruben,
Just a thought… you haven’t been sprinkling pixie dust next to the computer and some has accidently went into the hard drive and cured all?
You’re really lucky as many people are finding Outlook goes the other way after 3 or 4 weeks of use!
Regards
John
March 21st, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Hi all,
Probably wishful thinking, but do we have an official KB/Bug ID etc from MSoft on the AUTH POP3 performance issue that can tracked to resolution? One of my Execs has encountered this and therefore it of some importance to me. As usual I can find nothing specific acknowledging this on the MSoft site.
Regards,
Marc
March 21st, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Hello Marc,
We’ve got a bug report case active at the moment with Microsoft, along with a customer complaint about the poor support and lack of response! The bug report actually contains a number of bugs including the AUTH and general performance issues, especially the ones surrounding POP email.
All the KB articles so far are fluff and of little or limited use. They are presenting workarounds and ways to optimise Outlook so the performance issues are lessened.
The bottom line is we’ll be awaiting fixes and Office 2007 SP1 to cure most of these issues. Don’t see that appearing for a good few months and we’re likely to see the appearance of Vista SP1 first!
As soon as we’ve got news it will be published on this blog. Hope that helps a wee bit.
Regards
John
March 26th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I am not sure if my problem is related to the notes and information already provided or not. I received a call from a client of mine who had recently purchased Office 2007 and installed himself. He was having a problem with the Outlook portion, specifically with the receiving/downloading POP3 emails. He had worked with his ISP to make sure everything was functioning. I was called in when they hit a dead end.
I tried the tips provided in these notes (shane keller’s changing file names, turning off firewall and viurus software (AVG), and while it seemed to help with preformance (it was very slow to start taking over 30 seconds – it has a small pst file of 2MB), it did nothing to solve the issue of not being able to receive emails. I haven’t turned off RSS feeds yet and I haven’t removed add-ins. but I think these are more performance related.
Do you have any suggestions of how to solve this problem?
March 27th, 2007 at 1:36 am
After running Mike Bisson’s suggestion “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable” mail came in very quickly. Appears to have fixed my problem.
x86
Vista Ultimate
Outlook 2007
March 27th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Thanks Dennis, my client is not running Vista. they are running XP SP2. the problem seems to be more about connectivity rather than performance.
March 27th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
How does it run in safemode? Does it start-up immediately or does it still take a long time? What is pop email like when running in safemode?
Have you tried creating a new mail profile? Out of interest, how many pop accounts is the customer checking?
March 28th, 2007 at 3:03 am
It runs fine in safe mode except it won’t receive emails. I also have tried creating a new profile and still ran into the same problem, can’t receive emails.
March 28th, 2007 at 7:25 am
This sounds like you’ve may have bigger problems than just Outlook or you’ve managed to find a new scenario that causes Outlook a new and unreported issue! Running Outlook in safemode (not to be confused with running Windows in safemode) usually makes it run fine when the problem is one of the identified issues.
Have you checked the system for adware, rootkits, spyware, viruses and other forms of malware? It wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve got some nasties lurking on this system.
Can you receive emails with other email clients such as Outlook Express or Thunderbird? We need to establish that you can receive emails using software that has no issues.
Have you tried creating a new Windows account thereafter starting from scratch with a new clean Windows profile?
March 28th, 2007 at 11:19 am
My comments may seem to be awfully trivial. My apologies for that.
I’m running office2007 on XP. I had 3 POP connections running smoothly on outlook2003 before i installed 2007.
Then 2 of my mailboxes fail to connect.
I ran the office diagnostics(that came with 2007) though they registered that it rectify 1 known problem, but it failed to solve the POP connection problem.
Eventually, it was the Symantec Antivirus (Corporate Client V10)that got into way. I disabled the internet email auto protection functions and my POP connections are working now.
In my case, it was my oversight that AV may be in the way. But i hope that others who met with similar symptoms will not readily assume it was the AUTH issue as i did.
Anyway, right now, i stuck in a state of paranoia that i may be attacked by virus via outlook 2007.
March 28th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Thanks for sharing that Jacob.
You should look at the Symantec website and if necessary contact their support to see if they have a patch available. Also worth checking that you’ve got all the latest updates installed.
Personally, we’d never have a Symantec security product on any of our systems or those of our customers.
March 28th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Thanks for the suggestions. We are able to receive emails through outlook express. This is what was so puzzling to me.
I think I found the solution. There seemed to be an authority issue with the passwords. A screen kept popping up asking to enter the password even though the password was already entered. I would reenter the password and click the box to save the password. Then a moment later the same message would come up again. It didn’t matter if I reentered the password or simply allowed it to keep the password it had in the password field. It got to the point where the enter password dialogue box popped up quite often. So I reserched this at Microsoft.
I followed the steps at this microsoft KB article and it fixed the problem. This article did not say it applied to Outlook 2007 but it fit my situation so I tried it anyway. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290684
I am now receiving emails on Outlook 07 with no problem.
It seems the registry contained incorrect information for the Protected Storage System Provider subkey for the user account. Once I completed the suggested steps (regedt32) and restarted the computer the problem disappeared.
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. Outlook is opening quickly and so far running normally.
March 28th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
[...] Googled in search of an answer and found this. It mentions Outlook 2007 rather than Windows Mail but it sounds like the same root problem. [...]
March 28th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Thanks for sharing the solution Tim.
That’s a new one to me and this blog post! Hopefully, you’ve now helped others with this suggested fix.
April 5th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Hey guys,
i had the same prob. Vista Ultimate, Office 2007 no receiving of emails. Sending was alright, but i couldn’t pick up my emails from the server.
Somehow/where i found a log where someone said, you need a newer firmware on your broadband router or a newer router. The TCP/IP protocol of Vista works differently(?).
After not finding a solution i thought, what the he**, i chucked away my Be router and put my Netgear DG834G on the line…
and look, it works! Different router helps!
no idea if it helps some of you. I was so happy to find at least some troubleshooting tips last night that i thought i might be helpfull for some of you…
happy easter!
Marc
April 6th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Thanks for sharing your suggestions Marc. I’ll add them to the main article.
You’re absolutely right that the network stack has been redesigned for Vista. More details here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0905.mspx
Wow that’s strange that Vista was only having an issue with POP routing through your router. Just yet another piece of legacy hardware that breaks under Vista!
Regards
John
April 6th, 2007 at 6:56 am
Just to add to the list we are experienceing slow send / receive using the VPOP3 mailserver. 20 installations of Office 2007 and all are slower than previous Outlook 2000 but some are much worse than others. The only significant difference between the setups are varying pst file size. At the moment I’m reverting to 2003 for the worst cases and the problem disappears.
April 6th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Using Mike Bisson’s suggestion “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable” mentioned by Dennis Kubecka in post #37 solved my problem of receiving emails
April 7th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
[...] see this article about Outlook “receive is [...]
April 15th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Tried Office diagnostics, found 1 error pointing me to a Microsoft KB site telling me to go into RegEdit to remove a old vox-driver. That reg-key was not even present on my computer, and since I had a clean Vista+Office2007 installation the article stating incompability problems with old legacy drivers sounded wrong.
Searched the net for guideline, and found this site. Followed the “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable” suggestion which finally solved my POP3 slow/failure recieve problems.
Thnx a lot! /M
April 17th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Hi,
I work on Outlook and I read your post discussing the performance issues you’ve seen in Outlook 2007. I wanted to let you know that we’ve just released an update designed to improve performance in Outlook 2007, especially for large mail stores. You can read more details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/willkennedy/
To download the patch: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C262BCFD-1E09-49B6-9003-C4C47539DF66&displaylang=en.
Thanks for your comments,
Melissa
April 18th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
The first update from Microsoft to address some of the performance issues:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C262BCFD-1E09-49B6-9003-C4C47539DF66&displaylang=en
It doesn’t make things perfect but it is a start that appears to help!
Added:
Melissa, the patch has made a very slight improvement with the rendering of email in the preview pane now being much improved, but the system still locks up when receiving pop email and it still suffers from general performance issues compared with Outlook 2003. As I said previously, it is a start but there seems to be a long way to go before Outlook 2007 is anywhere near the performance of Outlook 2003.
p.s. You comment wasn’t added on the 17th April. It didn’t turn up until mid May!!!!!
April 20th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
I had a similar problem : No error message but messages weren’t download. It turned out like another user mentionned that Antivir caused the problem preventing the download ou e-mail. Its really fast I have no problem whatsoever beside the fact that its seem no antivirus really support Outlook.
May 18th, 2007 at 6:40 am
I just bought a new laptop with…Vista on Friday. I also had to purchase the ’07 office….I had been having problems receiving e-mails with attachments from my POP3 server…after two hours on the phone with Microsoft, various IT people offering their help, countless hours of research, Mike Blisson’s suggestion of “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable” in the command prompt worked like a charm….I just had to say thank you!!!!
June 5th, 2007 at 3:56 am
I have a brand new machine, Office 2007 installed. A 75mb mailbox, all the above RSS feeds etc disabled, cache mode off, running in plain text mode (not html), have installed the so called performance patch and still the typing in Outlook 2007 lags behind by 3-4 seconds.
My client is getting quite impatient that I cannot find a solution to this problem.
Help!!
June 5th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
What OS are you using, XP or Vista?
How does it function when running in safemode?
Have you tried creating a new mail profile?
June 5th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I’m struggling with a problem with 2007 that is a little different from what I’ve been reading other than the slowness described. I use OL2007 with aol imap email. sometimes itll work fine but more often then not it will go through the motions to receive mail and say complete but no email will appear. I have had to use mozilla thunderbird to verify if I have email or not. If I restart OL2007 a few times, then it will finally give me my email and reminders… I had no problems with OL2003 and might go back… I need to use outlook for the calendar and to receive appointments to sync with my PDA or I’d dump this lemon… Anyone know how to fix my problem? OL2007 just sits there and doesn’t display or actually receive emails from my imap server say 70% of the time but still says complete with no errors…
mike393@aol.com
June 6th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
We’ve migrated a few customer away from AOL recently when they were having issues with Internet connectivity! Worth considering if AOL is part of the problem, which when bundled with Outlook 2007 makes things unbearable.
June 6th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Thanks… See…I’m not sure if its AOL or not… or just OL2007 and AOL together… I have had my email for several years and have so many profiles and accounts with this email its hard to let go. I never use the aol software anymore but its hard to shake the address. My wife is going to get me another email address from a domain we got for our family and Ill see if the same thing happens and make that consideration then… Ill have to keep aol around for awhile either way… what a pain… I love the nw outlook for all other things and the calendar is great…
June 9th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I figured it out and solved my problem… it is outlook 2007 thats not working right with imap email… I fixed it by uninstalling it and re-installing office 2003…. I’m now very happy… hope bill gates figures out his office product… and I’m glad I didn’t shell out $400 for it. Mike
June 15th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Hello all!
Okay so I tried everything I could find on the web and in the discussion boards and nada helped me at all. Finally I did one thing that seems to make a HUGE difference for me. I uninstalled the SSQL server (likely installed with the Small Business Edition w/Business Contact Manager) and Voila! .. so far everything is working fantastic and my entire system is running fast again! Check if you have this and if you don’t need it – try that and see if that makes a difference on your end as well.
Amanda
June 16th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Yes, Business Contact Manager is a system killer! We never install it unless the mission is to turn the customer’s system into treacle!
Thanks Amanda for remind us to mention it.
June 21st, 2007 at 2:07 am
The problem with Outlook 2007 and the AUTH command is that OL2007 uses DIGEST-MD5 and it doesn’t seem to work with some mail servers, like mine. I removed DIGEST-MD5 as an option on our mail server and now my OL2007 clients can authenticate and receive mail.
June 21st, 2007 at 9:23 am
Thanks for the feedback. Which email server are you using?
June 21st, 2007 at 4:24 pm
MerekMail Server. I have confirmed that this did correct the login problems for all my OL2007 clients.
June 30th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I have an interesting scenario.
I have a client who has bought a brand new Vaio laptop running XP Pro SP2, upon which I did a clean install of Office 2007.
The problem is not only the slow download but the disappearance of the profile on closing down. All the email that was downloaded(all 300M) was lost, or I should say the profile just disappeared in outlook, although all the files are present in Local Settings\Application Data etc.
But aligned to that, the Blackberry cannot synchronise because you cannot browse the files. This to me is a function of Office 2007 and the catalogue records, presumably the meta data is not being made available for system use ??????
I have yet to get to site and try some of your solutions, but my problem is a pig top sort given that the user is champing at the bit to get reliable use out of the new machine..
August 16th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Our VP just upgraded to Outlook 2007, and even though it is set to receive new mail every 1 min, they have to hit the send/receive button. Any suggestions?
August 17th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Checking email every minute? Are they mad!
Email servers don’t like that kind of load and some hosting providers may well have systems that will see this kind of activity as a DOS attack.
The email system was never designed for that kind of checking. Checking every 10 or 15 minutes is more like the recommended automatic checking time. They can always use the Send/Receive button if they require more frequent checking at any moment in time. In fact, we’re sure that we saw a comment somewhere that says Outlook likes the setting to be in the region we indicated.
For business productivity reasons they shouldn’t be doing that kind of email checking anyway!
See:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/07/14/productivity-tip-1/
August 17th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Thinking more about it, try increasing the checking time and see if it starts to work at a certain point. Start at 5, move up to 10 and so on.
It is likely that anything below 5 minutes isn’t going to be reliable for a variety of reasons.
August 20th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Hello,
I am experiencing the problem of missing attachments and ripped off mail body in my outlook client. However, when i access the server via the web interface, everything seems to be working fine and the whole mail with all the attachments are visible.
Kindly suggest me a solution to this problem.
With Best Regards,
Tushar Singh
August 20th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
What operating system are you using? Vista per chance? This may seem unrelated by bear with us, what antivirus are you using? What firewall? What antispam solution?
September 1st, 2007 at 12:19 am
Havin a BIG problem with vista 32 and 64 bit using outlook 2007.
Both windows mail and outlook reject login to collect email, tried this on more than 1 machine and still no joy. Tried the netsh interface command and not change also neither machien has firewall, antivirus or defender running. The server is a linux based webserver using pop3s for main collection.
Imapi does work.
Boomer
September 2nd, 2007 at 4:00 pm
We’ve occasionally seen routers or computers causing this problem, admittedly on Windows XP. Try power cycling your router and computers.
Can you login to another POP3 account somewhere else?
What does the Outlook and server logs show by way of the reason for the rejection?
September 4th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
I am seeing a big delay in the log as shown here:
2007.09.03 21:30:37 : Synch operation completed
2007.09.03 21:31:58 : Synch operation started (flags = 00000001)
There were several other exampes of 20-30 second delays.
September 4th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Again, what OS and antivirus are in use? Is this Outlook 2007?
September 4th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Peeps, this is looking more like a microsoft interface issue with Linux based servers. We have just encountered this problem since moving from one server platform(plesk using redhat) to another . If anyone can post a conversation from vista /outlook 07 to their server it will help us look at the issue. The bad news is I think this is a rough ride with your ISP’s as the over use of the AUTH command DOES cause big timeout delays in outlook 07. And this is a os interface issue between vista and Linux as to what kernel and config we need to findout. your assisstance would me most appreciated as we’ve spent around 12 hours manpower on this problem already
Sco Logic
September 9th, 2007 at 3:05 am
I am using XP, No AV (removed Mcafee to see if it was the problem – it wasn’t)
Outlook 2007
15 POP3 accounts, some not linux.
Have tried to turn instant search on/off – no change.
No other software problems, only Outlook 2007.
Full machine info:
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name DEVELOPMENT
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model Dell XPS710
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2394 Mhz
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2394 Mhz
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2394 Mhz
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2394 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. 1.4.1, 5/7/2007
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = “5.1.2600.2705 (xpsp.050622-1524)”
Time Zone Pacific Daylight Time
Total Physical Memory 4,096.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 2.23 GB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 4.84 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
September 9th, 2007 at 10:19 am
The problem is the 15 POP3 accounts. Outlook 2007 starts to struggle with performance issues once you have more than 1 POP3 account!
Are your PST files really large? You really need to get them as small as possible.
I’ve got 5 POP3 accounts set-up and Outlook 2007 is usable but most certainly has problems!
September 9th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Outlook 2003 had no problems at all. Perhaps the problem was assuming that an UPGRADE would be an UPGRADE.
I have archived email such that no PST has more than 1.5GB.
Barring a resolution I will have to go back to Outlook 2003. Outlook 2007 seems not-ready-for-prime-time.
September 10th, 2007 at 12:22 am
PROBLEM SOLVED 100% if you cant login to pop3 or pop3s in Vista using windows mail or outlook07.
from the lovley people at www . scologic . com
Okay people, this is the problem.
Microsoft don’t use SSL encryption, they say they do but in real terms they dont. Microsoft do however use TLS encryption which by default is normally switched off as default on a wide range of linux mail servers. The problem manifests itself more with Vista due to Microsofts straight jacket (I lurv myself soooo much)Security, which we all love and cant really switch off.
The bottom line test to use to ensure and proove our findings is to use firefox mail as it actually does what it says on the box… gasp it uses SSL encyption.
So if you PST files are large kill some mail or Archive some.
If you use Antivirus from any company other than MWTI(who are the best darned AV company by far). Dont worry about the email problems it’s probably TLS Encryption and you genuinely cant log into email as vista dont speak SSL.
Outlook 07 is Slow from the excessive use of AUTH but we’ve just to live with that one..
Lov to yall and have fun asking your ISP’s to enable tls encryption on their servers.
Sco logic (this is honestly the fix your all needing – we’re just goin nuts from spending days on this, and the celebrations have left us a little bit too happy…)
September 10th, 2007 at 5:32 am
The problem isn’t that it is broken… It is that it is SLOW. So slow that it is all but unusable.
September 12th, 2007 at 12:44 am
It looks to be possible to use SSL email on Linux servers with Outlook 2007, it just needs to be set-up properly. Change the following Advanced Internet E-mail Settings for each email account:
Server Port Numbers
– Incoming server (POP) = 995
– Outgoing server (SMTP) = 465
Use the following type of encrypted connection = “SSL”.
However, it should be noted we’ve never stuck a packet analyser on that to see the traffic is truly encrypted, but since the server certificate is self-signed, Outlook warns that the certificate is a little dodgy and ask if you wish to continue – you don’t see this behaviour when using standard unencrypted email. Seems to suggest an SSL connection is being used! Our server, like the majority of Linux servers, doesn’t support TLS out of the box and we’ve never requested that it be switched on which reinforces the case that SSL is being used successfully on our set-up.
Outlook MVPs are recommending Avast or AVG by way of an antivirus program. Even then, the recommendation is to turn off the on demand email scanning. McAfee and Symantec AV products seems to be causing all kinds of problems under Vista when they are configured to use on demand scanning of the incoming and outgoing emails. Goodness, this is a massive backwards step to have to turn off a security feature to get stable email delivery under Vista! It has also be recognised that Windows Mail has some big issues full stop!!! Don’t use it, instead keep clicking on the Thunderbird icon or use another email program or webmail.
September 12th, 2007 at 12:55 am
MikeE, our testing has shown that any PST file above a few hundered megs is going to cause significant performance problems.
Have you installed the performance patch issued a few months back as it does improve things slightly? However, to listen to Microsoft you’d think it was a panacea fix that cure all – ha, ha!
We also found that upgrades require a new mail profile to be created. Bottomline is an upgrade seems to corrupt the profile or cause some incompatibility that results in performance problems.
Even in the best possible situation, Outlook 2007 appears to grabs the full attention of Windows when it is receiving emails from a POP3 account. If you’ve got 15 POP3 accounts to cycle through and even a proportion of them is receiving even one email each then it will appear as if the computer is dog tired for a significant amount of time.
You’re quite correct that this really isn’t acceptable and makes POP3 support in Outlook 2007 inferior to that of the old father version (Outlook 2003). Going back to Outlook 2003 is certainly one of the best “fixes” for your configuration and data requirements.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:00 am
I have installed the patch. No difference. I did re-create a profile. No difference.
I tried to force an SSL connection with no real luck. I removed 7 of the POP3 accounts and it improved things, but Outlook still sucks the life from the machine. The interesting thing is that the CPU% does not go up. It is hard drive access that is slowing the machine down OR a semaphore for some critical O/S section.
Thanks for the response. If only MS was as responsive as are the people on this blog.
September 13th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Thanks MikeE for the nice comment.
Yes, what you’ve described is the exact same on every install of Outlook 2007 where multiple POP3 email accounts are being checked.
You’re also quite right about the disk utilisation killing the whole computer! The changes made to the way that Outlook 2007 reads and writes information to PST files is very sick and there is a serious bug that should have been detected and fixed a long time ago!
September 13th, 2007 at 3:47 am
Large files eventually CORRUPTED and there are NO tools out there to fix. Several users in our organization have seen multi-year PSTs corrupted.
Any thoughts on a repair tool?
September 13th, 2007 at 3:49 am
Large being 10-20GB. ScanPST hangs and crashes. PST Repair takes months. EasyREcovery not 2007 compatible. IOLO no go. etc etc etc.
September 13th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
We tried switching on ‘SSL’ protocol as suggested as part of the problem initially and it looked like it was working but in truth we knew there was 10 email awaiting download, and it never downloaded them. Switching TLS on to the webserver it worked 1st time.
We found this out by putting an analyser on the network.
September 13th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Wow G-D Help Us… that is a complete bummer! We’re not aware of any repair tools over and above those mentioned. We’ll ask about and see if we can find out anything.
Per chance, does importing a corrupt file into a new profile with an empty new PST file work?
Thanks Boomer for sharing your experience. This just goes to show what a tough time Microsoft have in coming up with every combination out there! However, it doesn’t excuse the fact that so much is broken in Outlook 2007, especially stuff surrounding POP3 email processing.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Foound a fix by Microsoft that totally solved the slow download of emails problem. ou wil ind the fix here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935400/ KB935400. At the command prompt type “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled” hit return, start Outlook 2007 and se if it is solved.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:08 am
Thanks Pensador4 for your comment, but this “fix” has already been suggested and is listed in the blog post. Additionally, it is only a fix for Outlook 2007 running on Vista. Unfortunately, it is only one of the things that can cause Outlook (and some other applications) to run like a dog. Expect to see more performance problems once your PST file size has grown!
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:39 am
The netsh fix is not applicable to Outlook 2007 running on XP. Correct?
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Yes MikeE, it is a Vista only fix.
October 6th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Am using Vista with Outlook 2007 and can’t get the server e-mails to delete from the server once I download e-mail. There is supposed to be a setting under advanced settings for e-mail called “Delivery”. Well guess what, my version of Outlook 2007 does not have this so I can’t set the settings that would enable the e-mails on the server to delete once I have downloaded them. Has anyone else had this issue? Is there a fix?
October 6th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
It is still there. Go to Tools> Account Settings>(click on an account if you have more than one)>More settings>Click on
Advanced tab > at the bottom of that window, under Delivery, there is the option to click “Leave a copy of messages on server” – unclick it.
October 6th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
The default option is for this to be set to NOT leave the messages on the server so it would be surprising to see the option that Ozzie has pointed out having a tickmark against it. Please let us know if this was the cause or if there are still problems and we’ll see what else may be causing the problem.
October 7th, 2007 at 2:51 am
Thanks. Yes I understand how to change the settings and that this will fix the underlying problem. I know how to get to this screen (Advanced). However, when I get to this screen, there simply no “Delivery” visible on this screen. The screen has “Server Port Numbers” section, then “Server Timouts” section which finishes with “Root folder path:” and then there is nothing below this where “Delivery” section should be. It simply is not there to change. I have checked my Outlook 2006 on my other computer and this setting is there but not on my 2007.
October 7th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Are you sure you’re using POP3 and not MAPI?
What port numbers is Outlook using?
Have you tried creating a new profile and adding this account afresh?
Have you tried setting up the same email account in Windows Mail or Thunderbird? Worth trying to see if the option is available in those and if it works.
October 8th, 2007 at 2:24 am
That’s it! IMAP not POP3. I let it automatically set up my account originally and it set it up as IMAP. Because the e-mail worked I did not even think about POP3. All is how it should be now. Thank you very much for your help!
October 13th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Oops! Got MAPI and IMAP mixed up. Glad you knew what was meant and even better that the advice fixed the problem.
October 15th, 2007 at 12:30 am
I had the slow pop recieving problem. tried various fixes. gave up and am now using another mail program. I’d like to use outlook but it should not be behaving like it is. Come on Bill & Co!!
john
October 16th, 2007 at 1:36 am
Check out my post…this is how I fixed a client’s Outlook problem.
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/chuck1119/2007/10/15/be-careful-outlook-2007/
October 16th, 2007 at 10:19 am
That’s a very loose “fixed”. The really big problem was always a POP3 email issue so moving to Exchange is certainly going to cure a load of the main issues highlighted in this blog entry.
Still it is a nice “fix” for your bank balance
.
October 16th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
The company I work for has a client who has been using Outlook 2007 on a Windows XP Professional W/SP2 box. We have been receiving emails from this client informing us of Outlook hanging when doing send/receive. The client currently uses one personal email account and the other is work account. I know that one of them is POP3, possibly both. I have read pretty much this whole page and others, I am aware that its more than likely not going to be fixed, but I was wondering if anyone could give me direct instructions on something to try to speed up this problem even if its just a little bit.
Thanks…
October 16th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Josh, this blog post is hopefully a list of things to try. Have you worked through them?
October 31st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
I had the same problem with pop3 and Outlook 2007.
I could send through smtp but not able to receive any mail with my pop3 configuration.
The solution that I managed to make it work was to enable pop3s on our webserver (RedHat).
This solved my problems but you need to enable pop3s on your server, not a end-user solution per se but easy if you have access to your mail server.
I spended 2 days with this problem.
Computer was a brand new Intel Core 2, 2 Gig RAM, wireless conecction with Vista Home Premium.
There is something broken with Vista and POP3 for sure.
Hope this helps.
October 31st, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Thanks for sharing.
Vista POP3 works fine if you use Thunderbird and works with Windows Mail until it manages to corrupt something!!! The big problem is the way that Outlook 2007 handles POP3 email and more specifically how it manages emails in PST files. Microsoft have got their new PST management completely wrong and screwed up in Outlook 2007.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:21 am
The only problem was that I tried to used Thunderbird after I got into trouble with Outlook, but I couldnt make it work.
It will hang up at the same spot as Outlook on the POP3 authentication, this leads me to believe that is more a problem with Vista than Outlook but I could be wrong I am not an expert just a normal user.
Thank you for your help.
November 1st, 2007 at 3:14 am
My new Outlook 2007/Vista instal ran just fine for about two months. Then, right in the middle of DLing 10 messages, it got unbearably slow. I tried many of the tips on your page, but it was the “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled” that fixed it. Thank you very much for taking the time to compile this information!
November 1st, 2007 at 4:32 am
The netsh command certainly looks like the best fix for Outlook 2007 problems on Vista. Seems strange that Microsoft’s newest Office suite can’t run on a default Vista installation without having to disable features of said new operating system.
We always use Thunderbird in preference to Windows Mail for new Vista installs. It runs a treat so it looks like something is corrupt or damaged with Diego’s Vista install or he is connecting to one of the mail servers known to have issues with Outlook/Vista.
November 1st, 2007 at 5:09 pm
This is a part of the log that I generated with Outlook:
2007.10.31 10:21:01 POP3 (): Port: 110, Secure: no, SPA: no
2007.10.31 10:21:01 POP3 (): Finding host
2007.10.31 10:21:01 POP3 (): Connecting to host
2007.10.31 10:21:01 POP3 (): Connected to host
2007.10.31 10:21:01 POP3 (): +OK POP3 v2003.83rh server ready
2007.10.31 10:21:01 POP3 (): Authorizing to server
2007.10.31 10:21:01 POP3 (): [tx] AUTH
2007.10.31 10:21:01 POP3 (): +OK Supported authentication mechanisms:
2007.10.31 10:22:16 POP3 (): End execution
The last 2 lines are the important ones, it will pass 1 min between the and after that it will abort the transaction.
This leads me to believe that the problem is in Vista, I am not sure what was the cause because I didnt installed anything out of the ordinary.
Hope this helps somebody.
November 4th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Dear John, Just read your reply (march 3rd). Whoops.
I found the AUTH problem using network monitor back in Dec ’06. So I posted that in detail with captures etc. (several posts in the Oulook NG). Sorry, I did not know how to contact MS direct. I just thought some MVP would “pass it on” to the Outlook team. Just took a look again (4 Nov ’07 11:14 AM). OL2007 is *still* sending AUTH.
Three of my POP servers (ISP’s) set back -ERR such and such (command invalid / not valid in this state / etc, etc.)
Amazing…. I don’t what to say… Er, really….. I give up I suppose. A big thank you for this thread of course! Maybe – finally – the Oulook team will realize its quest for valid POP3 AUTH responses is a bit silly if they read all this.. ? Dunno. ??!! ?? I have a headache. Must go. Cheers, Ring0
KeBugCheck(42);
November 4th, 2007 at 7:13 am
Ring0,
All the issues highlighted here have been reported to Microsoft by us when it seemed that the Outlook MVPs were trying to blame everything else except Microsoft’s new baby. Haven’t received any feedback on what is happening with the bug reports! Really doesn’t bode well for a quick fix.The general concensus is these types of issues won’t be fixed until Service Pack 1 and god knows when that is going to arrive.
The biggest issue with Outlook isn’t the AUTH issue, it is the way OST/PST file handling/processing is now done. They’ve really taken a big step backwards from how OL2003 worked.
Thanks for your comment.
Regards
John
November 26th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
I was getting ready to blow my desktop away and go back to XP but thought I would spend a little more time and look for a solution. I am using Vista with Outlook 2007 connecting to a Exchange 2003 which I manage. The PST/OST issue is bull. My OST file is less than 50MB and I have had the same slow performance issue everyone else has had. I have been suspect from the beginning that this was a network issue because of the constant sync traffic going back and forth from my Vista box to Exchange. It did not do this when I was running XP and Outlook 2007.
The netsh command fixed my problem instantly! No reboot required BAM it worked and fast! Now I don’t have to blow my desktop away and go back to XP. I have a feeling that 90% of the performance issues is network related. MS changed the stack and when you are connected to a network that is using older routers/switches this is bound to create problems. Thanks for putting this fix out here!
Mike Roeser
Systems Administrator
November 27th, 2007 at 1:47 am
Glad to be of service Mike.
Office 2007 certainly seems to behave better on Vista boxes! Now there is a surprise
.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
I am having a major issue with users who are running Outlook 2007.
For the past 2 months all of these users were able to receive email. Since Thursday of last week none of them including me are able to receive any email.
All users are running XP SP2, I have tried to completely uninstall and reinstall Outlook 2007, deleted the registry keys, profiles, uninstalled Antivirus, disabled firewall you name it! Nothing seems to be working.
If I install Outlook 2003 the email is being received normally with no problems on the same computers. I have a few systems which are brand new and have Outlook 2007 if i setup my email account on them It works!
It seems the problem stems with users who had outlook 2007 installed prior to Thursday when something came up and is blocking us from receiveing emails.
This is happening on about 10 computers, It is only blocking from our exchange pop 3 server.
We are running exchange 2000, and this doesnt make any sense?
Any help would be appreciated!
November 28th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
What AV?
BTW: Exchange isn’t a POP3 email server!
Don’t quote us on this, but Exchange 2000 isn’t a fully supported server product with Outlook 2007. It isn’t even mentioned in this Technet article:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/8a060469-bbe7-4f09-80f3-24201e6ac4ef1033.mspx?mfr=true
Perhaps you need to downgrade to Outlook 2003 or upgrade to Exchange 2007.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
The antivirus program is AVG Free, I uninstalled it and completely stopped the firewall service.
The Outlook log, looks as if it is seeing the pop3 server but then not authenticating at all.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
There is nothing in that article which states that outlook 2007 is not compatible with Exchange 2000, it does state it is not supported on version 5.5.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:10 am
AVG shouldn’t have anything to do with it. I’ve had issues with Outlook 2007 forever (and grin and bare it everyday) running Windows XP and I have AVG free too. AVG has never been an issue on my end. All of the emails I have though (about 12) are pop3. No insight on the server issue from this end.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:21 am
The issue is very strange, it seems something is blocking access to our mail server. If 2003 is installed it works fine, but when 2007 is installed it doesnt receive.
I even setup my gmail account on this same computer with Outlook 2007 and it works. This would make you think its the server, but if i setup this same account on a brand new computer with outlook 2007 it works!
This is just very strange!
November 29th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
@Jack: Neither is it listed as supported! Exhange 2000 has been in extended support since Dec 2005, which usually means they won’t test new products to work with it and they won’t add features to Exchange 2000 to make it work with Outlook 2007. Any version of Exchange that is out of support completely will be completely unsupported.
Again, Exchange doesn’t use POP email folks so it isn’t the usual POP3 processing issues. There have been far fewer issues with Outlook 2007 connection to Exchange servers.
AVG Free and Exchange…. strange combination as Exchange is usually used by commercial organisation and AVG Free isn’t licensed for commercial use. There haven’t been any reported issues with AVG breaking Outlook 2007 so that isn’t a likely source of your problems.
See this webpage for a possible cause and solution:
http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2006/up060608.htm
Try the Microsoft Public Discussion forums for both Exchange and Outlook. They should be able to help you.
December 5th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Hey Jack I am having the exact same problem. Did you find a fix? I have been running 2007 for a while with absolutely no problems. Then all of a sudden two of my POP3 accounts are gone and the other two wont receive. I don’t even have a send/receive option on my tool bar.
|
Strange indeed!!!
December 5th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Have you guys tried creating a new Outlook profile thereafter setting things up again?
December 12th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
EVERYONE IT LOOKS LIKE THEY’VE FINALLY FIXED THE BIG PERFORMANCE ISSUES.
Go see out blog post on the recently released Office 2007 Service Pack 1:
http://www.roundtripsolutions.com/blog/2007/12/12/303/office-2007-service-pack-1-released/
Let us know how you get on with it.
December 15th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Well, it is a bit of a performance bump, but not much and not nearly adequate. I am using XPSP2 on a FAST machine. It still takes an embarrasing amount of time for mail to flow in – far longer than previous versions of Outlook.
I also do not understand why ALL PROCESSES are so impacted by Outlook.
In short: Still unacceptable.
December 16th, 2007 at 1:37 am
MikeE thanks for the comment. Yes, it is a big improvement but not perfect by any manner. When you first install SP1 you can wrongly believe the problems are all fixed because it was so broken before. However, after a few hours of using it, it becomes apparent that things are far from perfect and Microsoft still have some way to go before they get back to Outlook 2003 performance levels.
Having Windows Desktop Search installed will cripple your machine! Ensure it is uninstalled. We tried reinstalling it and the computer seemed to have a mind of its own.
All the other recommendations look to still hold true for performance issues surround Outlook!
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
I have been struggling with slow Outlook 2007 problems ever since upgrading from 2003. No matter how much I cut down the PST file or compacted it there wouldn’t be any performance difference, I also tried some of the other techniques like disabling some features and renaming files however it also didn’t do much to speed up the constant lag with 2007.
I guess I overlooked it but coming back to day I noticed there was a blurb about upgrading the rules “Tools->Rules&Alerts->Options there is an “Upgrade Rules” option”
I don’t know why but once I did this and restarted Outlook everything seemed to drastically improve. It still could be a little faster but it is no longer killing my hard drive and lagging forever when downloading simple email. Upgrading the rules seems to have helped a lot. I wonder why you have to manually update them though? shouldn’t MS automatically update something like this during the upgrade process?
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:24 am
It is also worth installing Office 2007 Service Pack 1 if you’ve not already done it.
It seems like the MS upgrade process from Office 2003 to 2007 is a little flawed! Seems like it was a late rush to get Office 2007 out the door, flaws and all!
January 28th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Wow! after searching for MONTHS I stumbled across this BLOG – thank heavens for all you wonderful people (I’ve read it all – even tho I didn’t u/stand all!). I didn’t even know how to ask my question (broken email? no – it was delayed!) so it took a while to get here. thanks especially to Mike Bisson for his netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable fix.
I’ve been wondering if I really needed Business… in Outlook so I uninstalled that tonight, too, which fixed a few niggles I had with my toolbars…
Incidentally – I couldn’t find any of the 4 files mentioned for fixing the conversion from 2003 (had always suspected there were problems in my whole system caused by copying over some old stuff…); not a worry as things in Outlook are so much better now; my programme even opens so much quicker. Yes, there are still a few niggles, and my computer burbles away at times when i’m impatiently tapping my toes, but it is such a big improvement.
I must admit I chuckled at the number of times people said it took them, say, 30 seconds to get an email: you’re lucky! I waited HOURS – often! after seeing them on WebMail or in MailWasher there was a huge variation in time taken to then view in my InBox
Ta to everyone.
Outlook 2007
Vista Ultimate
February 14th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Hi everyone and I am so glad to find this blog. I am not as technical as most of you. But I can’t even open outlook today to go to tools or anything. I get an error message and the start of Outlook opening and then when I close the error message the whole window shuts down. I downloaded service pack 1 and I ran a diagnostic test and it showed everything was ok.I have rebooted several times and to no avail. Arrrg I am running Outlook 2007 and Vista Ultimate any help would be GREATLY aprreciated.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
First off, will Outlook start in safe mode?
From a command prompt:
outlook.exe /safe
February 14th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Hi there! I appreciate you helping. I tried safe mode but to no avail. I have finally found the outlook file and right clicked and did a system restore to yesterday. Now it seems to work – but I have no idea why. I am worried that it will crash again. This fix took me about 3 hours
Well it probably would take you much less time.
Thanks for checking in – I may be back in no time.
February 14th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
The Microsoft updates were released on Tuesday and probably got installed automatically! Maybe one of them affected you.
February 15th, 2008 at 12:12 am
That makes alot of sense come to think of it. Sheesh.
That would explain alot. I have had nothing but trouble since I upgraded. Oh well keeps me on my toes and finding great sites like this. Thanks
February 19th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
g’day everyone,
just finished reading all the comments here to find a solution to my problem (dunno if this is the right site to ask tho, but worth a try) i have outlook 07 (obviously) as an exchange client, (OS is XPsp2) no problem in sending but a BIG problem receiving. wonder if someone can point me the right direction of a site maybe.
cheers!
February 28th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
After upgrading to O2K7 from 03, my Outlook downloaded my e-mail and I could not find them. I was told by PHILLIPINES support that I had too many e-mail addresses – Gee, 5 e-mail addresses for work and personal crashes a program like Outlook – B.S.!!!!!!!!!
I spent two hours on the phone with the phillipines last night with nothing but frustration and some moron with the ID number of “v-2paya”
telling me I would get tier 2 support calling me in the morning between 7-8 about this matter – B. S. !!!!!!
I called and was told by ARUN JAGAMATH that the tech NEVER received authorization to go to Tier 2,
and he should not have told me. I have been hung up on, transferred to PAY support, and lied to. Perhaps Outlook 2K7, like Vista, is a waste of money and we should wait another two years for the next iteration? 
February 29th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Our experience of Microsoft support for Outlook 2007 wasn’t all that hot either!!!
Typically we’re using Outlook with 6 – 8 email accounts, so the 5 email issue isn’t the real issue.
Have you tried installing Office 2007 Service Pack 1? It certainly improves things, but doesn’t cure all.
Did you follow the instructions in this blog post? We found Outlook 2k7 to be really flaky to begin with, but creating a new profile, reducing the size of PST files and careful selection of the options made a big difference.
You may also like to raise a complaint with MS customer service about the product and the support you have received.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I appreciate the suggestions, and they were EXACTLY what I did, or would do – IF I could. I need to maintain all the data, and reducing the size of the file was not an option. What is so strange is why would an earlier version work, and a later, more improved, new, fancy expensive version NOT. The deeper issue is not so much the lack or ease of upgradability but the piss poor response from the malayasian call center and their incompetent staff. If you sell a product, you should foresee issues relating to upgrading – besides, having to wait for the service pack to be released and then install it, makes no sense.
Thank you for taking the time to make these suggestions.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Almost every Outlook 2007 user agrees that Outlook 2007 is a step backwards!!!! They seem to have changed Outlook’s architecture resulting in some big issues with email handling.
You must do the steps indicated if you want any chance of getting it to be usable.
The service pack is there now and will also be available from Microsoft Update. Installing it will make a difference and it fixes quite a few hundred bugs and problems.
You could also go back to Outlook 2003 if you have that available.
March 2nd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
We’ve decided that there is more than enough information in this blog post and the comments to make Outlook 2007 perform better. As such, the comment facility on this blog post will now be closed.
November 15th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
[...] is a great article that summarizes lots of ideas you can try to attempt to make fix Outlook performance [...]