Deleting and Reinstalling Outlook Express?

I let windows download some upgrades to my computer, running Windows XP. They have been piling up for sometime, so today I decided to let them upgrade. After upgrade and rebooting, I cannot get Outlook Express to access my server for mail. I called my local server company and they had me check differant settings but couldnt help. They suggested to delete the outlook express and reinstall. I have Mozilla thunderbird that I opened and made it the default mail, and my messages were received and I can send via them. I went back and made Outlook Express the default mail but still had same problems. So, I deleted the Outlook Express folders, but now, I cant figure out where to download or access a "new" Outlook Express, to install, and see if that corrects my problem. Can anyone help?
thanks,
coadman

 

I've had good luck with the instructions on The Elder Geek site.

If you've run the patches, then Windows will think you have a newer version of OE than what is available from Microsoft's download page. You'll need to edit your registry to tell Windows that OE is not installed (deleting folders won't do it).

But...I am having a similar problem, in that the latest OE update has been breaking OE. See my thread XP / "Outlook Express cannot be started / MSOE.DLL will not load "

Lor

 

Read your thread, and it is a bit confusing to me. Can a person just not find Outlook Express by itself, apart from Internet Explorer and do a reinstall that way?
coadman

 

No, unfortunately, there's no separate OE download. Outlook Express is part of Internet Explorer. It seems kind of silly to me, but ya gotta work with what ya got. If you want OE, you get it through IE.

On the plus side, the installer is one of those smart download tools. If you edit your registry to make your system think OE is not installed, but leave the registry to think IE still is, then the only components that get downloaded are those for OE. We're on the slowest DSL package and the download takes about 2 minutes.

After you edit the registry, you can try the download interactively from the Microsoft site (although it probably won't work because the installer will think you have a later version). You can still get some usefull info this way, though. I don't remember exactly, but I think we found that we had to download around 8 or 10M for the OE-only install. When we cleared the IsInstalled keys for both IE and OE, I think it showed 77M (?) for the full download of both programs. (We experimented on a non-critical system, first.)

If you aren't comfortable editing the registry, you could see if you know someone who is. Otherwise, just follow the instructions very carefully and you should be fine.

Here's Microsoft's How to reinstall or repair Internet Explorer and Outlook Express in Windows XP, but we found we needed the tip on the Elder Geek page.

 

How about uninstalling the update that's related to OE?

I had the MSOE.dll error last week with the most recent update. I just used system restore (it worked) and then reinstalled the latest round of updates. No problems since.

 

coadman and Lor--MS recently released an article about problems that might be caused by the original OE Critical Update 911567 and how to fix them.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917288/
The original Security Bulletin for update 911567 was also revised.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS06-016.mspx
It is not completely clear whether any revision to the update itself has been made. I do not think so. I suppose going to Windows Update might be a way to find out.


And this thread may be of interest
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=52594

 

Thanks Jim. I think codeman's problem is that he deleted his OE files (if that is even possible), so he may need to re-install. The fix described might be worth a try for him, though.

I see you responded to my thread, too, so I'll respond there for my issues.

~ L

 

Lor--Yes, as coadman has said "I deleted the Outlook Express folders ". But he should still be able to use The Elder Geek's advice to uninstall the OE program and then reinstall. That may even eliminate the MS06-016 patch. But if not, and he still has the problems mentioned in his first post (or he reinstalls MS06-016 and gets the problems back), he may need to run the fix in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917288/.