I am not very computer literate so please be patient. I am running Windows
XP SP3, Outlook Express 6 and IE7.

My problem is that every time I try to open an email from a company which
displays a company logo or letterhead it takes around 5 minutes to open.
Sometimes Outlook tells me it is not responding and I get a blank white
screen. This happens even when I try to delete that email. My internet is
also running slow and I am using Broadband.

I would appreciate it if anyone could assist me and if you could make your
instructions simple to follow. Thanks

Denise Snow wrote:

I am not very computer literate so please be patient. I am running Windows
XP SP3, Outlook Express 6 and IE7.

My problem is that every time I try to open an email from a company which
displays a company logo or letterhead it takes around 5 minutes to open.
Sometimes Outlook tells me it is not responding and I get a blank white
screen. This happens even when I try to delete that email. My internet is
also running slow and I am using Broadband.

I would appreciate it if anyone could assist me and if you could make your
instructions simple to follow. Thanks

Try enabling the "Block images and other external content" security
option in OE. The signature probably contains a link back to an image
on the sender's file server. The e-mail client has to retrieve a copy
of it each time it renders the HTML-formatted e-mail. If their server
is slow then so, too, is the rendering of the e-mail as the e-mail
client has to wait for that external content to arrive. You should have
this security option enabled, anyway, since it eliminates spam or other
e-mail that inserts web beacons into an HTML-formatted e-mail to
determine if that e-mail was opened. Alternatively, you can configure
OE to always read e-mails in plain text format. Any HTML-formatted
e-mails which be stripped of their HTML coding and you will only see a
text version of the e-mail. Links don't work in plain-text format mode
so no external content will get yanked to show that e-mail.

If you installed MSN/Live Messenger (and do use it), disable the option
to automatically connect to the messenger service. It causes a delay to
lookup the status of anyone on your buddies list.

Do NOT refer to Outlook Express as Outlook.

1a. Move any messages that you want to keep out of Sent Items and Deleted
Items folders and into other local OE folders you've created for archiving
(saving) such messages.

1b. Move 99% of your messages in your Inbox folder to other local OE
folders, too.

2. Write down the location of your identity's store
(http://www.insideoe.com/files/store.htm#storemain).

3. Close OE.

4. In Windows Explorer, navigate to your store folder, find & delete the
files Outbox.dbx, Sent Items.dbx, and Deleted Items.dbx.

5. Open OE and manually compact all folders
(http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#compact).

To avoid such problems in the futu

- Don't use Inbox or Sent Items to archive messages. Move them to local
folders created for this purpose.

- Empty Deleted Items folder daily.

- Disable Background Compacting [not available in SP2] and frequently
perform a manual compact of all OE folders while "working offline". More at
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm

- WinXP SP2 only: Do not shut down your machine while Windows is
automatically compacting your message store.

- Disable email scanning by your anti-virus application. It can cause
corruption (i.e., loss of messages), it provides no additional protection,
and even Symantec says it's not necessary:

QP
Disabling Email Scanning does not leave you unprotected against viruses that
are distributed as email attachments. Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect scans
incoming files as they are saved to your hard drive, including email and
email attachments. Email Scanning is just another layer on top of this. To
make sure that Auto-Protect is providing the maximum protection, keep
Auto-Protect enabled and run LiveUpdate regularly to ensure that you have
the most recent virus definitions.
/QP
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...02111812533106
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Desktop Experience - since 2002
AumHa VSOP & Admin http://aumha.net
DTS-L http://dts-l.net/



Denise Snow wrote:
I am not very computer literate so please be patient. I am running
Windows
XP SP3, Outlook Express 6 and IE7.

My problem is that every time I try to open an email from a company which
displays a company logo or letterhead it takes around 5 minutes to open.
Sometimes Outlook tells me it is not responding and I get a blank white
screen. This happens even when I try to delete that email. My internet
is
also running slow and I am using Broadband.

I would appreciate it if anyone could assist me and if you could make your
instructions simple to follow. Thanks

Thanks I tried all you said and still having the same issues.


"VanguardLH" wrote:

Denise Snow wrote:

I am not very computer literate so please be patient. I am running Windows
XP SP3, Outlook Express 6 and IE7.

My problem is that every time I try to open an email from a company which
displays a company logo or letterhead it takes around 5 minutes to open.
Sometimes Outlook tells me it is not responding and I get a blank white
screen. This happens even when I try to delete that email. My internet is
also running slow and I am using Broadband.

I would appreciate it if anyone could assist me and if you could make your
instructions simple to follow. Thanks

Try enabling the "Block images and other external content" security
option in OE. The signature probably contains a link back to an image
on the sender's file server. The e-mail client has to retrieve a copy
of it each time it renders the HTML-formatted e-mail. If their server
is slow then so, too, is the rendering of the e-mail as the e-mail
client has to wait for that external content to arrive. You should have
this security option enabled, anyway, since it eliminates spam or other
e-mail that inserts web beacons into an HTML-formatted e-mail to
determine if that e-mail was opened. Alternatively, you can configure
OE to always read e-mails in plain text format. Any HTML-formatted
e-mails which be stripped of their HTML coding and you will only see a
text version of the e-mail. Links don't work in plain-text format mode
so no external content will get yanked to show that e-mail.

If you installed MSN/Live Messenger (and do use it), disable the option
to automatically connect to the messenger service. It causes a delay to
lookup the status of anyone on your buddies list.

I have tried everything you have stated and still having same issues.

"PA Bear [MS MVP]" wrote:

Do NOT refer to Outlook Express as Outlook.

1a. Move any messages that you want to keep out of Sent Items and Deleted
Items folders and into other local OE folders you've created for archiving
(saving) such messages.

1b. Move 99% of your messages in your Inbox folder to other local OE
folders, too.

2. Write down the location of your identity's store
(http://www.insideoe.com/files/store.htm#storemain).

3. Close OE.

4. In Windows Explorer, navigate to your store folder, find & delete the
files Outbox.dbx, Sent Items.dbx, and Deleted Items.dbx.

5. Open OE and manually compact all folders
(http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#compact).

To avoid such problems in the futu

- Don't use Inbox or Sent Items to archive messages. Move them to local
folders created for this purpose.

- Empty Deleted Items folder daily.

- Disable Background Compacting [not available in SP2] and frequently
perform a manual compact of all OE folders while "working offline". More at
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm

- WinXP SP2 only: Do not shut down your machine while Windows is
automatically compacting your message store.

- Disable email scanning by your anti-virus application. It can cause
corruption (i.e., loss of messages), it provides no additional protection,
and even Symantec says it's not necessary:

QP
Disabling Email Scanning does not leave you unprotected against viruses that
are distributed as email attachments. Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect scans
incoming files as they are saved to your hard drive, including email and
email attachments. Email Scanning is just another layer on top of this. To
make sure that Auto-Protect is providing the maximum protection, keep
Auto-Protect enabled and run LiveUpdate regularly to ensure that you have
the most recent virus definitions.
/QP
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...02111812533106
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Desktop Experience - since 2002
AumHa VSOP & Admin http://aumha.net
DTS-L http://dts-l.net/



Denise Snow wrote:
I am not very computer literate so please be patient. I am running
Windows
XP SP3, Outlook Express 6 and IE7.

My problem is that every time I try to open an email from a company which
displays a company logo or letterhead it takes around 5 minutes to open.
Sometimes Outlook tells me it is not responding and I get a blank white
screen. This happens even when I try to delete that email. My internet
is
also running slow and I am using Broadband.

I would appreciate it if anyone could assist me and if you could make your
instructions simple to follow. Thanks

Denise Snow wrote:

"VanguardLH" wrote:

Denise Snow wrote:

... every time I try to open an email from a company which displays
a company logo or letterhead it takes around 5 minutes to open. ...

Try enabling the "Block images and other external content" security
option in OE. The signature probably contains a link back to an
image on the sender's file server. The e-mail client has to
retrieve a copy of it each time it renders the HTML-formatted
e-mail. If their server is slow then so, too, is the rendering of
the e-mail as the e-mail client has to wait for that external
content to arrive. You should have this security option enabled,
anyway, since it eliminates spam or other e-mail that inserts web
beacons into an HTML-formatted e-mail to determine if that e-mail
was opened. Alternatively, you can configure OE to always read
e-mails in plain text format. Any HTML-formatted e-mails which be
stripped of their HTML coding and you will only see a text version
of the e-mail. Links don't work in plain-text format mode so no
external content will get yanked to show that e-mail.

If you installed MSN/Live Messenger (and do use it), disable the
option to automatically connect to the messenger service. It causes
a delay to lookup the status of anyone on your buddies list.

Thanks I tried all you said and still having the same issues.

How BIG is that e-mail that you are reopening? If it's big, it takes
time to render it if HTML-formatted. Does it open faster if you
configure OE to always read e-mails in plain-text mode?

How BIG are your .dbx files used to store the items in each folder
shown in OE? There is a 2GB limit to the size of these files. Going
over that limit will cause corruption of those files which means you
lose their content.

Did you try disabling the e-mail scanning function of your antivirus
software? If that didn't help, uninstall the antivirus software and
reinstall using a customized install to Deselect the e-mail scanning
module.

It does run faster in plain text mode.

The dbx files are as follows: DeletedItems.dbx 1867kb, Drafts.dbx 137kb,
Folders.dbx 73kb, Inbox.dbx 137kb, Jokes(1).dbx 1807kb, Nortons AntiSpam
Folder.dbx 59kb, Offline.dbx 10kb, Outbox.dbx 75kb, Other.dbx 137kb,
Pop3uidl.dbx 10kb, SentItems.dbx 75kb, VideoCard.dbx 137kb.

I have no idea what Pop3uidl.dbx is!!

I have cleaned out all of my email folders to try to help this issue. I
have disabled Nortons antivirus on email. The email we are trying to open is
17kb.



"VanguardLH" wrote:

Denise Snow wrote:

"VanguardLH" wrote:

Denise Snow wrote:

... every time I try to open an email from a company which displays
a company logo or letterhead it takes around 5 minutes to open. ...

Try enabling the "Block images and other external content" security
option in OE. The signature probably contains a link back to an
image on the sender's file server. The e-mail client has to
retrieve a copy of it each time it renders the HTML-formatted
e-mail. If their server is slow then so, too, is the rendering of
the e-mail as the e-mail client has to wait for that external
content to arrive. You should have this security option enabled,
anyway, since it eliminates spam or other e-mail that inserts web
beacons into an HTML-formatted e-mail to determine if that e-mail
was opened. Alternatively, you can configure OE to always read
e-mails in plain text format. Any HTML-formatted e-mails which be
stripped of their HTML coding and you will only see a text version
of the e-mail. Links don't work in plain-text format mode so no
external content will get yanked to show that e-mail.

If you installed MSN/Live Messenger (and do use it), disable the
option to automatically connect to the messenger service. It causes
a delay to lookup the status of anyone on your buddies list.

Thanks I tried all you said and still having the same issues.

How BIG is that e-mail that you are reopening? If it's big, it takes
time to render it if HTML-formatted. Does it open faster if you
configure OE to always read e-mails in plain-text mode?

How BIG are your .dbx files used to store the items in each folder
shown in OE? There is a 2GB limit to the size of these files. Going
over that limit will cause corruption of those files which means you
lose their content.

Did you try disabling the e-mail scanning function of your antivirus
software? If that didn't help, uninstall the antivirus software and
reinstall using a customized install to Deselect the e-mail scanning
module.

1. Disable or uninstall Norton AntiSpam.

2. Disable NAV's scanning of incoming & outgoing mail. It provides no
additional protection, it could be troublemaker here, and even Symantec says
it's not necessary:

QP
Disabling Email Scanning does not leave you unprotected against viruses that
are distributed as email attachments. Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect scans
incoming files as they are saved to your hard drive, including email and
email attachments. Email Scanning is just another layer on top of this. To
make sure that Auto-Protect is providing the maximum protection, keep
Auto-Protect enabled and run LiveUpdate regularly to ensure that you have
the most recent virus definitions.
/QP
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...02111812533106

3. Ask those using MS Outlook to only send messages to you in Plain Text
format.
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Desktop Experience - since 2002
AumHa VSOP & Admin http://aumha.net
DTS-L http://dts-l.net/




Denise Snow wrote:
It does run faster in plain text mode.

The dbx files are as follows: DeletedItems.dbx 1867kb, Drafts.dbx 137kb,
Folders.dbx 73kb, Inbox.dbx 137kb, Jokes(1).dbx 1807kb, Nortons AntiSpam
Folder.dbx 59kb, Offline.dbx 10kb, Outbox.dbx 75kb, Other.dbx 137kb,
Pop3uidl.dbx 10kb, SentItems.dbx 75kb, VideoCard.dbx 137kb.

I have no idea what Pop3uidl.dbx is!!

I have cleaned out all of my email folders to try to help this issue. I
have disabled Nortons antivirus on email. The email we are trying to open
is 17kb.



"VanguardLH" wrote:

Denise Snow wrote:

"VanguardLH" wrote:

Denise Snow wrote:

... every time I try to open an email from a company which displays
a company logo or letterhead it takes around 5 minutes to open. ...

Try enabling the "Block images and other external content" security
option in OE. The signature probably contains a link back to an
image on the sender's file server. The e-mail client has to
retrieve a copy of it each time it renders the HTML-formatted
e-mail. If their server is slow then so, too, is the rendering of
the e-mail as the e-mail client has to wait for that external
content to arrive. You should have this security option enabled,
anyway, since it eliminates spam or other e-mail that inserts web
beacons into an HTML-formatted e-mail to determine if that e-mail
was opened. Alternatively, you can configure OE to always read
e-mails in plain text format. Any HTML-formatted e-mails which be
stripped of their HTML coding and you will only see a text version
of the e-mail. Links don't work in plain-text format mode so no
external content will get yanked to show that e-mail.

If you installed MSN/Live Messenger (and do use it), disable the
option to automatically connect to the messenger service. It causes
a delay to lookup the status of anyone on your buddies list.

Thanks I tried all you said and still having the same issues.

How BIG is that e-mail that you are reopening? If it's big, it takes
time to render it if HTML-formatted. Does it open faster if you
configure OE to always read e-mails in plain-text mode?

How BIG are your .dbx files used to store the items in each folder
shown in OE? There is a 2GB limit to the size of these files. Going
over that limit will cause corruption of those files which means you
lose their content.

Did you try disabling the e-mail scanning function of your antivirus
software? If that didn't help, uninstall the antivirus software and
reinstall using a customized install to Deselect the e-mail scanning
module.

Denise Snow wrote:

It does run faster in plain text mode.

The dbx files are as follows: DeletedItems.dbx 1867kb, Drafts.dbx 137kb,
Folders.dbx 73kb, Inbox.dbx 137kb, Jokes(1).dbx 1807kb, Nortons AntiSpam
Folder.dbx 59kb, Offline.dbx 10kb, Outbox.dbx 75kb, Other.dbx 137kb,
Pop3uidl.dbx 10kb, SentItems.dbx 75kb, VideoCard.dbx 137kb.

Some of them are way too big.

Why are you keeping around all those deleted items? Delete them from
the Deleted Items folder to actually get rid of them. You can also
configure OE to purge the Deleted Items folder when you exit OE.

Do you really need to keep all those old jokes around? If so, drag the
message to a folder in Windows Explorer to save it outside of OE (and
delete it from OE). If you later need to read a joke e-mail, just
double-click on it. It will be an .eml file which is a text file so you
can also open it in Notepad.

Once you delete unneeded items from the oversized folders (and then
delete them from the Deleted Items folder since nothing in there has
been deleted but just moved since it obviously still exists for you to
see it in that folder), do a compaction. Delete-marked items are not
physically purged from the .dbx files. They are just hidden by the
e-mail client; i.e., you won't see them but they are still there.
Compaction while physically purge the delete-marked items from the .dbx
files to make them smaller. As I said, the limit is 2GB (that is the
decimal value whereas the binary value is 1.87 GiB and it appears you
are at that limit). Not keeping these files significantly under the
limit will result in their corruption when they exceed that limit.

I have no idea what Pop3uidl.dbx is!!

Every email delivered to a mailbox must be assigned a unique ID number.
That is the job of the mail server. Every message ID assigned to a
received e-mail must remain unique throughout the lifetime of that
mailbox. POP has no concept of what are new or old messages. That a
message is old is simply your e-mail client keeping tracking of what you
previously downloaded from your mailbox. To know what it previously
downloaded, it has to keep a record of every message ID for every e-mail
that it downloaded, and that is what this file is for.

I have cleaned out all of my email folders to try to help this issue. I
have disabled Nortons antivirus on email. The email we are trying to open is
17kb.

Since it opens faster when forcing OE to read e-mails in plain-text
mode, that HTML-formatted problematic e-mail has links to external
content that must be retrieved every time you open it. Their file
server is slow, hosts in the route between you and their file server are
slow, or the size of that external content that you end up downloading
is huge. The local copy of the HTML code for the e-mail may only be
17KB but that doesn't prevent an external link from downloading many
megabytes from their file server to your host.

Did opening their e-mail get faster when you configured OE to block
external content, as suggested before?

VanguardLH wrote:

Denise Snow wrote:

The dbx files are as follows: DeletedItems.dbx 1867kb, ...

Oops, hold on. When I read your reply, I saw 1867KB as 1867MB which
would be at the 1.87GiB threshold. If indeed they are around 1.8MB in
size then they are small. The problem lies elsewhere.