outlook 98 on XP profile issue

I've posted some of this in the networking section...hoping for some help here, too. By the way, several folks have been very helpful there.

OK, when I open Outlook 98 on an XP machine it is telling me that "the profile name contains characters that are not valid, type a valid profile name. "
I checked the profile and it looks innocent enough. It was working fine yesterday. It operates on the network fine, in terms of accessing the internet, but no dice on Outlook.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.