Outlook 2007 opening very slowly
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Thread: Outlook 2007 opening very slowly

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
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    352

    Outlook 2007 opening very slowly

    A client came in complaining that Outlook 2007 started running very slowly following some friend of his installing Avast. There were some remnants of his old McAfee install that I removed with their removal tool, and I was able to speed up the initial loading by removing a 12gb archived pst, but it still seems to be loading up really slowly.

    Process Explorer isn't showing any unusual strain on the processor or the RAM when Outlook starts up, the HDD isn't showing up as failing, and virus scans came back clean. What's more, Outlook doesn't finish the initial loading much faster when XP is in Safe Mode.

    The only other source of slowness I can think of would be the Business Contact Manager software loaded into Outlook, but I'm not all that familiar with it. Is that what's slowing Outlook down, or perhaps the remaining PSTs attached to it? His default pst is just about 3.5gb.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2000
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    Idaho Falls, Idaho, USA
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    Large .pst files are probably the primary cause, once you have got his antivirus software down to ONE program only. Outlook 2003 was limited to 1.75 GB (2 GB) maximum. Even though the limit has been increased, a 12 GB .pst file is way too large to have any speed. Even a 3.5 GB file is larger than you want if you are looking for speed. How long does it take him to get a .pst file up to 1.75 GB? I always archive mine at that point and start a new one. You can always attach or open any of the archived files if you need to dig up an old e-mail.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
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    352
    Looking at what he still has in his personal folder, it looks like it's more a case of him not archiving things as often as he should, which seems odd given his 12gb archive file.

    I noticed his 3.5gb data file was only about 1.5gb of actual content, so I made another one and imported his stuff into it. He had a couple of extra addons that I went and disabled, too. Still not much of an improvement performance-wise, so I suppose it's just a matter of getting him to pare that down to what he really needs with the rest archived.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 1999
    Location
    Largo, Fl.
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    I'd look at the Avast settings and make sure it's NOT scanning outgoing mail.. In theory, if the pc is clean there's no need to scan outgoing mail.
    If you're happy and you know it......it's your meds.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2000
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    Idaho Falls, Idaho, USA
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    If he has any search software that searches through the Outlook data, that combined with the large .pst files can also slow things down.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
    Posts
    352
    Avast wasn't scanning his outgoing email, and he didn't appear to have any extra search software running in the background.

    He needed to get the laptop back, so I just explained that he should be more diligent in archiving his emails (the earliest was from 2004) and the nearly 3000 order confirmation emails he was holding onto. Hopefully with that and the other modifications, Outlook should start running smoother for him. Thanks for the help, guys.

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