Finally solved my Microsoft issue

No, I haven't thrown out the PC and bought a new one, although I've been seriously tempted.  But I like a challenge.  So, back from Asia and, after months of whinging about Vista, I've finally solved the biggest issue I've had on my shiny, new $5,000 PC that looks like a Ferrari and runs like a brick. 

Outlook 2007.

Outlook 2007 has had challenges since release, as can be seen from this long thread of blogging by Tim Anderson and friends.  I had to read this long thread because I have an issue that relates to it.

Every time Outlook 2007 goes into send and receive mode, my PC stopped working. 

Seriously.

It
just freezes.  No more outlooking or emailing.  No more googling or
surfing.  No more blogging, powerpointing or anything really.

You
just have to sit and wait whilst Outlook tries to get its measly mail
squeezed down the wire ... which normally takes about an hour even
though I'm on BT's top-rate broadband package.

Ggggrrrrr ...

Business productivity goes down the toilet, as you waste an hour a day staring at a dumb screen that can't do anything.

Now
I also happened to recently buy a travel laptop with Vista and Office
2007 ... and it works like a dream.  I took it to Singapore and it's
fast, easy, pretty and lovely. 

So, on return as the far more powerful office PC sat and did it's usual 'get lost, I'm trying to get this 5 kilobytes of new mail and it's taking me ages', I thought there is something fundamentally wrong with this.

After reading Tim's blog on Outlook's issues, I started to try all the recommendations.

First,
I took out Outlook's indexing.  That's a shame as it is one of the new
features I like the most as it allows you to find any email with an
instant search, although Google desktop can do the same. 

No fix
and same problem, stare at shiny new PC whilst it gets it's 2 kilobytes
of mail for five minutes, and dream of being Mike Tyson in the ring
with Bill Gates.

Next, I took out all of the add-in's, deleted
all of the RSS feeds, archived emails religiously to try and get my
filesize down to under 500 megabytes, which is tiny. 

No fix
and same problem, stare at shiny new PC and dream of being in a bungee
jump with Steve Ballmer ... but I'm the only one with a rope!

I've spent hours every day online searching google, reading manuals and threads, and gawd knows what else.  I even did the hokey-cokey and turned around, and even that failed.

I still had the same basic problem.  Outlook freezes and hangs the PC all day long.

I was wasting about an hour a day being frustrated with a well-hung PC!

So, I had one of four choices:

(a) Blog about how rubbish Office 2007 is ... but I already did that;

(b) Ring Dell techie support and get them to sort  it out ... tried that, but the Indian contact centre can't be reached due to the internet being down;

(c) Pick up the PC and throw it at the dog ... can't do that, I like my dog; or

(d) fix it myself and waste as much time as needed to get it to work.

I go for choice (d). 

Screwdrivers at the ready, along with
tissues for the blood, sweat and tears I was about to indulge in, I get
ready to clean up, reload and reboot my PC from scratch.

 

...

 

When I think, hold on, what is this?

Loading Outlook in safe
mode, it comes up with "Outlook has a problem with Bullguard
spamfilter".  Aha ... half of my instability is caused because on XP,
being wary of its security faults, I've been using Bullguard which is a
nice, easy consumer friendly firewall, antivirus and spamfilter
software service.

The only thing is that Vista comes with its own
built-in firewall, antivirus and spamfilter security features which
means that if you use another one, the two clash and compete with each
other.

Mmmm ... I wonder what would happen if I remove my trusted Bullguard spamfilter?

"Would you like to re-boot now or later?"

Aw, go on then, re-boot now.

 

And ...

 

... it can't be? ...

 

... is it? ...

 

... isn't it? ...

 

... it is!

 

Hallelujah!

Hallelujah!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Halleeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-lu-jah!

IT WORKS.

Thank the lord. 

I'm
just over the moon, ha-ha hee-hee, to have a PC that finally works,
ho-ho heh-heh, and a degree in computer science awarded as a result of
converting to Vista with Office 2007, ha-hee ho-heh.

They're coming to take me away, ha-ha ...