Knowing what the Outlook 2003 .dat file do can often assist’s you with troubleshooting Outlook issues. The primary .dat files are: Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for 2011
Outlook .dat Files
Posted by William Diaz on February 4, 2011
Posted in Office | Tagged: Outlook | Leave a Comment »
Inside Windows – Office Repair vs. Reinstall
Posted by William Diaz on February 3, 2011
All of you have at one point or another had to troubleshoot an issue with Office that required you to repair or reinstall Office. Have you ever wondered why these two options exist and what they do differently from the other? The answer is in a single parameter attached to the command and this parameter can sometimes make all the difference.
Microsoft KB article 298027 states:
There is a subtle difference between these two options and you will want to make sure you choose the appropriate option based on your situation. In either case, the Windows Installer /f command line switch is being called. The difference is in the parameters that are being attached to the /f switch.
Note You can also perform a Repair procedure from any of the Office programs by clicking Detect and Repair on the Help menu. This procedure is the same procedure that is performed when you click the Detect and repair errors in my Office installation command in Maintenance mode. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Inside Windows, Troubleshooting | Tagged: Office | Leave a Comment »
The Case of the Outlook Send Email Hangs
Posted by William Diaz on February 3, 2011
Process Explorer can often times give you clues to hung processes. Simply open the hung process and go to the Threads tab. Take this case here where Outlook was hanging and showing significant CPU usage while trying to send an email. I started by identifying the hung thread. In this case, CPU time and CSwitch Delta columns make this obvious. Select the thread and double-click it or click the Stack button to see the state of the stack. The stack reads from bottom to top. Look at the most recent frames for clues to the problem. In this case, mshtml.dll stands out:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: Hang, Outlook, Process Explorer | 2 Comments »
AIM Network Logging Reveals Windows Passwords
Posted by William Diaz on January 27, 2011
I was asked to troubleshoot a user’s connectivity issues with AIM. I am not too enthusiastic about anything AOL related but I would look anyway. One of the things I wanted to do was see if AIM had some internal network logging built into it. Starting with version 7.5.8.2 there is an option that resides under Settings > Connection that enables diagnostic network logging. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Networking, Security | Leave a Comment »
A Faulting Module Is Not A Broken Module
Posted by William Diaz on January 14, 2011
It is not usually the case that a “faulting” module is the actual cause of an application error, crash, or hang. Take this example where Outlook was crashing each time after the user opened Outlook: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: Crash, Outlook | Leave a Comment »
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