XP / "Outlook Express cannot be started / MSOE.DLL will not load"

My husband and I are helping a neighbor with her computer. It's an eMachines XP system. She doesn't have a lot of software that she uses, but for some reason there are quite a few things on her system that I (as a "If you dont really need it, don't install it" kind of person) wonder about, like Napster (she doesn't share files) and BigFix (all she really uses is Outlook, IE, and Norton).

She recently switched from AOL dialup to our local phone carrier's DSL. We've had a couple of issues with OE. The day after the last security update, she was unable to access OE at all and got the error message:
"Outlook Express cannot be started / MSOE.DLL will not load "
We tried re-installing OE (using instructions on The Elder Geek site) and that seemed to work. We also changed Windows Update from automatic to notify. (Norton thinks that's a bad thing, but I think it's being overprotective.) Things have been fine for the last few days, but suddenly the error message is back.

The Microsoft site suggests that Address Book corruption can give rise to this error for 98 and ME, but there isn't any info on it for XP.

We're quite puzzled. Any other ideas for what we should look for would be most appreciated.

Thank you!

Lor

 

Lor--Did you read the communication from Socrates near the bottom of the Elder Geek site you mention?
There is also this site on OE corruption
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx

 

Yes, Welshjim, we did use the /Q switch Socrates wrote about. Simply double-clicking on the installer, even after changing the IsInstalled registry entry to 0 gave use the "you already have a newer version" message. We had the installer on a USB thumb drive and accessed that from the Command Prompt. With the /Q switch, it worked like a dream!

Thanks for the article on corrupted files. I turned off AV scanning for outgoing messages, but not incoming (I don't think; I'll check that). Her mailboxes aren't very big, probably less than 50 messages all together, since OE has only been running for about 10 days since we re-installed.

Fortunately, we aren't looking at any loss of incoming messages, I set OE to keep messages on the server for 60 days!

Thanks again! We'll look carefully at the possibility of corruption. It's just so puzzling....

Lor

 

Later that same day....

When we went over to see what was going on, we didn't have a lot of time, so we just re-installed OE, again, and everything worked. The files don't appear to be corrupted, because all her email was fine.

When MS issued the patch a couple of weeks ago, OE broke. We feel fairly confident it was the patch that broke OE because we
- reinstalled OE (to the earlier version), OE worked
- updated to the patch, OE broke
- reinstalled OE, OE worked

Today, we checked the version numbers on MSIMN.EXE and MSOE.DLL. When we got to our neighbor's they were:
MSIMN.EXE - 6.0.2800.1106
MSOE.DLL - 6.0.2900.2869
The version numbers do not match.

We re-installed OE and the version numbers were:
MSIMN.EXE - 6.0.2800.1106
MSOE.DLL - 6.0.2800.1106
The version numbers match, now.

We suspect that the MSOE.DLL was updated by something, yesterday, which broke OE, but don't know what. Windows Update was still set to Notify and showed an OE patch available for download.

She said the BigFix icon was blinking yesterday, so, perhaps that automatically updated the .dll, although the documentation says it isn't supposed to. (We considered uninstalling BigFix, but it appears to be an eMachines-branded item. We did, however, remove it from the Startup menu.)

Very confusing, though!

Lor

 

Lor--I have IE 6 SP1. (I also have WinXP Pro SP2)
My version of OE is 6.0.2900.2180. That is the same version as my msimn.exe (which makes sense since msimn.exe is the executable for running OE).
My version of msoe.dll is 6.0.2900.2869. I am pretty sure it was part of the March 2006 Windows Update 911567 or MS-06-016. Maybe you see if that Windows Update is offered to your friend.

 

Yeah...it looks like the .exe and .dll version numbers need to match. Wish I could get my hands on the newer version of the .exe for her system!

When we first ran into the patch-broken OE problem, the only update available was the one from April. Nothing from March. The April one definitely broke OE. We suspect now that versions didn't match, but we didn't write that down at the time. Er...the MS06-16 is the April update. Anyway, there wasn't a way to get the March update.

From codeman's thread :

The error messages described in KB917288 are not what we're seeing. There's no problem with the Address Book, we can run that as a separate program even when OE refuses to start.

The patches don't show up in her Add/Remove Programs list, so I have no idea how to roll them back. I've seen people mention System Restore, but I most certainly don't want to restore her system to the way it was earlier, because it took hours to uninstall and clean up after AOL and Netzero. (And that's not even cleaning garbage out of the registry, which I suspect the system really needs.) It's an eMachines computer, which means there's no media and I have no idea how one is supposed to go about doing a clean install of the system.

So...the upshot is that, with the way her system is, Windows Update appears to update only the .dll, not the .exe, and that breaks OE. If it's a cumulative patch...why not?



[frustration]Next time OE breaks...I'm installing Eudora. For the amount of time we've put in, even paying for the Pro version would have cost less than this piece of "free" software.[/frustration]

 

Lor--

You can see that is not the case on my PC.
I understand your friend has visited Windows Update and is not being offered any update for OE.
It is possible the 6.0.2900 versions of msimn and msoe are for WinXP Pro SP2. Does your friend run Pro? If not, maybe she has the latest for her version of Windows.
You cannot access the March version of http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS06-016.mspx

But you can see at the bottom of the page what revisions have been made in the latest version. Reference to the "Caveats" appears near the top under Summary.

 

Well, your .dll and .exe are both 6.0.2900. Her .exe is 6.0.2800 and it won't load the 6.0.2900 .dll. Whatever "patched" her system two days ago only patched the .dll, because the .exe version number is the same before and after we re-install.

I think she has XP Home, but I'm not sure.

The MS06-016 update is the April 11 update, not March. That update breaks OE on her system. I assume it's because it doesn't update the .exe, since the behavior is the same as what we saw two days ago.

The automatic update broke OE; the manual update broke OE. When we went to the Windows Update site there were no other options presented that related to OE. The only relevant option was the cumulative patch from April and OE did not work afterwards.

The error messages in the caveats section are not what we're seeing. We do not get error messages from the address book, nor do we get error messages from OE...OE simply won't start.

 

Check to see if you can unistall the patch. Or, use system restore to return to a date previous to the patch installation.

I had the same problem after installing that patch. I just used system restore and it solved the problem. I then reinstalled the most recent updates and all has been well since.

 

Zander, sorry, but I already said that the patches don't show up in Add/Remove programs and that system restore isn't really an option.


We've been through this sequence three times now: We reinstalled OE. The only patch that is then offered by Windows Update is the cumulative patch from April that breaks OE.

Re-installing OE fixes it, but some agent (not Windows Update) updated the MSOE.DLL two days ago and broke OE again. That's a disturbing development - I don't know what did the update, so I don't know how to prevent it from doing it again.


If OE breaks again, she gets Eudora. At a conservative estimate, we've put in close to 50 man-hours in research and work trying to get OE to work for her. It shouldn't require this much effort to get a basic email client working.