Problem with Outlook Express on XP sp3

We have two computers, mine and my wife's. I have no problem on mine. But she has a strange condition which we have not been able to resolve. We have run three different virus/adware checkers, Norton utilities, and other general configuration checkers to no avail.

Here is the problem. She can turn her machine on, call up Outlook Express and read the e-mail messages. Her machine does not delete the messages, mine does if I specify the message to be deleted from the server. Everything is fine at that point. She then does "computer" work, writing, etc. Then if she calls up Outlook Express again, the hour-glass appears for several seconds and then it disappears. The only way she can get to reload Outlook Express is to turn her machine off and then on again.

Any suggestions or comments will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
Mike

 

Hey mdietz39, how many antivirus programs are actually running with realtime scanning on her computer ?

 

We are using Vipre as the antivirus program. That is the only one running in real time. It is the same on my machine and I have no problem at all, same settings on both machines.

 

Does she close OE or minimize it after retrieving email? What is your procedure for deleting messages from the server after you read them? Are you doing this one message at a time or do you have OE set to always delete messages from the server after you have retrieved them? If you doing this one message at a time, how do you do that? I don't recall OE offering that action on a one-at-time basis.

 

I have the e-mail set for IMAP instead of POP3. That way I can control the "deletion" of the messages as I want. Our ISP gives us a trash bucket under IMAP. If I want to remove a message I move it from the in box to the trash bucket and the ISP deletes all messages in the trash box after 30 days. So it is not OE deleting the messages it is my moving them to the trash box.

It seems the problem has been fixed because she has not had any problems now for two days. I think you hit it when you asked about closing or minimizing it. She may have not closed it and when she tried to reopen it nothing happened because it was still active. The only problem with this is that generally would restore the minimized version. The other possibility is somehow the OE process was still running after the close which would prevent the reload.

Any way thanks for the reply.
Mike