outlook problem

I am puzzled about a problem a friend of mine has on his laptop with Outlook. He dials up ok and it connects to his isp ok and actually starts to download the e-mails when after a few seconds pause the (win xp pro) dialogue box appears saying that outlook has encountered a problem and has to close. The tech info says it is an exception and has all the usual lines of zeros as the details. It also says at the bottom:

Also to be added to the details to be sent to microsoft is th following file:

C:\DOCUME~1\MARTIN~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER2.tmp.dir00\appcompat.txt

With ref: to the above, Martin is the owner of the computer.

I have reinstalled outlook on one occasion and it did work for a day or so then the problem returned.

Any ideas? Cheers

Happy new year everyone

 

woz - Microsoft Outlook (part of MS Office) or Outlook Express (comes with the Internet Explorer browser)?