Greetings, all... And Thank You!

Amen to that "...best Microsoft Windows discussion community on the web!" bit.

Good morning. I just wanted you all to know I'm your latest new member and BIG fan!

Re: Your thread-id:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/microsoft...l/91716-outlook-exits-crashes-constantly.html

Thanks VERY much! Finding and reading this post on your forum undoubtedly saved me what could have been days or weeks of troubleshooting on Outlook 2003. If you look back at that thread, you'll see the OP took 21 days to figure out and resolve his issue. In my case it took just 15 hours and I slept for 9 of those hours! I started searching for a cause and solution at 4:00am this morning. I arrived in your forums around 6:30 a.m. based on a google search looking for a solution to a search that read: "Outlook 2003 crashes constantly ".

This problem suddenly appeared on my XP PC late yesterday. No matter what I did I couldn't stop it. Every time I started Outlook 2003, it crashed within seconds after it began checking email. Along the way I tried all the following steps in repeated attempts to isolate and fix this problem.

1. Confirm up-to-date status of Outlook and MS Office. Per control panel, I'm running Outlook 2003 professional sp3 version 11.0.8173.0 which contains all the Office 2003 SP3 patches plus all subsequent updates. All other MSOffice programs run OK. Only Outlook was crashing. Just to be certain, I double-checked windows and office updates site and confirmed all the latest updates were in fact installed.

2. Starting Outlook in safe mode (which allegedly disables all add-ons) - still crashes

3. Tried using scanpst to repair both outlook.pst & archive.pst. Both files contained errors. All errors were corrected. Outlooks 2003 still crashes moments after startup.

4. Checked CP/AdminTools/Event Viewer & searched Microsoft's TechNet for my application & EventID program and product name. This produced a 'short list' of 348,000 'related threads' containingg that event ID for all versions of MS Office since 2000! OMG!! Helpful? Hell No!

5. Tried starting outlook with fresh (empty) data and archive files - still crashes. My data files are clearly NOT the problem.

6. Tried detect & repair Office problems in Control panel add/remove programs. Repairs were applied. Outlook still crashes - even with empty data files.

7. Tried reinstall in control panel add/remove programs - reinstall asked for Office 2003 Pro source install disks. I haven't had or used those in years but in desperation, I started hunting for the original Office 2003 Pro install disks

8. After finding your thread and reading it carefully, I dove into the registry and tried disabling 2 Kaspersky COM add-ons for anti-spam & anti-virus. Poof... Just like that, the problem vanished! Clearly one of the Kaspersky COM add-ons was causing this problem. Disabling the Kaspersky Addons fixed the issue.

Thank You. I'm no IT amateur. I've been in the biz as a software and hardware consultant and pro for 44 years -- since 1968. Over those years I've managed many software and hardware projects that were measured in millions of lines of debugged code written, tested and released and man-decades of work. But I'm still a newcomer to PC's. I've only been working with them since '82. Today you saved my butt and helped me avoid 20 days of troubleshooting. I'm sending you a contribution based on my usual daily pay rate of about $1 a day!

Thanks again. I thought you'd enjoy knowing your site helped an old gray-haired pro solve a BIG nasty PITA problem darn fast. Today, YOU'RE ALL heros! (heroes? My sincere apologies to Dan Quail!)

Best Professional Regards,
TG (Greg) Platt
Socorro, NM USA