Errors w/WAB and OE6 malfunction

I have one problem with OE. It's with the Address Book which has evidently been missinstalled or is otherwise broken. I can't get to the Address book and suppose OE can't either. When I click on Address book I get a box with "Unable to open AB ". It may not be installed properly ". When I try to view a message in inbox I get a box with "There was an error when opening this message. An error has occurred ".
I have found a possible fix for this(Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 223797) which starts with the uninstall of OE in control panel>Add-Remove>Windows Set up tab. I now have no outlook express in that tab, I did have cause had done that before and reinstalled OE from the IE setup but not now(It's supposed to be in the Communications module, isn't it........I've looked thru them all more than once). I reinstalled OE not too long ago from IE setup but still no OE in that place.
Win98fe
IE6

 

Try the repair feature. OE is tied to IE, look in the control panel, add/remove, for Internet Explorer, highlight and click add/remove. You should get the option for repair.

 

Thanks for replying aleekat . I had done that before but repaired again after reading your post and it had me restart so thought perhaps the error had been found but not. Still the same after IE repair. Thanks and still hoping for a fix.

 

bobmc32--I understand you have two problems
1) opening the Address Book
2) with opening messages in OE
Concerning 1, perhaps the association of Address Book (C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\yourusername.wab) with the "wab" file has been corrupted.
Hold down Shift and right click on yourusername.wab| "Open With... "|scroll to wab|highlight|click the box at the bottom "Always use this program... "|OK. Did AB open? If you did not find yourusername.wab, you no longer have an Address Book and the above will not work. You will have lost the contents of your Address Book.
www.Google.com offers many other ideas (but they all assume you have an Address Book).
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q="Unable+to+open+Address+Book"

Concerning 2, it is not clear to me if you have uninstalled OE already. Please clarify before we explore various possible fixes.

 

Welchjim - I went to C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book and it displays "my name.wab(perhaps I should clarify:Address Book has no entries beneath it so when I click on the folder Address Book it then displays the following ->). I click on the AB in the right pane and it tells me this "The Address Book File has been locked by another application. Close the other application and try again." This may have started when I was trying to drag a saved AB from a backup CD to the current address book but not positive. Would it be possible to delete "My name.wab" then drag or import the latest b/u Address book?

As to 2. : I have gone thru a number of steps trying to remove and replace OE from the IE6 setup file. At the moment I have the last version of OE6 which when I click to open OE the first error message is "The address book failed to load. OE is incorrectly configured, please re-install (which I have done to the best of my ability)

Thanks for your reply.

 

Try this article from MS. If that works, then import your address book from the CD.

 

aleekat - I tried the fix in the link but had to omit the very first step of Control Panel>Add/Remove>Windows Setup Tab>Click to select the OE check box. I no longer have OE in that tab. I then tried going on from there with the rest of the fix but my computer illiteracy might have gotten in the way somewhere. In Windows Explorer I have several WAB files: WAB default "value not set ",
WAB.old default "value not set

WAB4 First run - 0x0000001 (1) and under that


Wab file name default C:\Windows\Application data\Microsoft\Address book
Pardon my lack of Registry knowlege.

These are all under HKEY_USERS_DEFAULT_SOFTWARE_MICROSOFT

 

Welchjim and aleekat - It is now fixed and in good working order. I used this Windows Knowledge Base article and deleted from the registry all it suggested then did another search for *.wab and found one straggler and deleted that one also, reinstalled OE6 from the windows setup, restarted and all is well and I wanna thank you both for your time and help. Welchjim, the "two" problems were really related in that with a fouled up Address Book OE was giving me errors so it was really one problem.
I'm happy!

 

bobmc32--Glad to hear the good news and learn what worked!!