Thanks for replying Vince.

In control panel the only mail related thing I see is Mail & Fax
and when I click on it I get MS Outlook Properties and I see
Personal Folders which is the outlook.pst file I mentioned. It has.
the same path. It shows me a choice of tabs
Services/Delivery/Addressing.
But there's nothing I can see in any of them that allows me to
create a fresh profile. How do I do it ?

I just found the outlook help files so I will check them out.
If you have a quick & easy answer, I'd still appreciate your reply.

Bill Mudd


"Vince Averello [MVP-Outlook]" wrote in message
...
I think Outlook v8.5 is Outlook 98. Have you tried creating a fresh profile
he Control Panel Mail applet?

"bill" wrote in message
...
I have XP/SP-2 with all the latest updates.

I have Office97 Pro with SR-2 and am not going to
part with it. Can't afford to get higher versions anyway.
All the other Office97 Pro programs still work fine.

My Outlook exe file version is. 8.5.5104.0

When I first start Outlook I get error message
"The file add-in "DUMPSTER.ECF" is missing or not valid ..."
then it goes on the tell me to find it and put it in the add-in folder.
It is already in that folder ... corrupted maybe, but it's there.

then when I click out of the above, I get another error message telling
me
"Outlook could not open the file containing the folders used to send
e-mail messages, create appointments, etc..."
It doesn't make any difference if I choose create a new personal folder
or use the old folder which is in ...
\Documents and Settings\MyName\Application Data\
Microsoft\Outlook\outlook.pst
... I still get the error message
"The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If problem
persists, restart Outlook..".
then when I click ok Outlook dies. It never does fully start.

I had a crash a few months ago and haven't used Outlook since it happened
so these files could be corrupted.

Thanks for any help in getting it going again,