Outlook 2007 Email Hanging Computer

I am still working on the new Dell XPS machine. 8 cores of i7 kickass goodness, 16 GB of RAM, triple monitors – and it hangs whenever the Outlook 2007 email is checked.  My world would just be perfect if…

Well, a good start would at LEAST be not having to stop for 15 seconds every time the email gets checked.  I’ll be typing along and everything just freezes. Checked it out and got the helpful Microsoft page for Outlook 2010 or 2013. Is it just me, or does Microsoft basically disavow knowledge of everything prior whenever they release a new product?  I can never seem to find any reference to any old version information with a normal search and end up going to blogs (which is why I blog so much – so I can find all this stuff later somewhere on one of my blogs LOL).  Here’s the MS page for 2010/2013 Troubleshooting Email problems with Outlook.

If found this page on WinHelpOnline.com to steer me in the right direction when I couldn’t get past “The connected state of Office Add-Ins registered in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE cannot be changed” popup notification.  Sure, I *could* have gone in and edited the registry, but who wants to do THAT??

And then on to THIS page from NirSoft about actually accessing and disabling Outlook Add-Ins which may be troubling to my new computer – which worked EXTREMELY effectively.

I suspected that there were actually add-in problems with my Outlook as I *do* have a lot of software on this machine – and some known “problem causers”, at least in my own opinion.  I verified it by using the “outlook /safe” at a cmd prompt.  Worked great.

Anything involving iTunes and Adobe cause issues for me regularly – annoying conflicts, needing to reboot, etc.  These two software providers seem to frequently be at the root of issues I have.  Between Adobe “You have sneezed – a reboot is required” anytime you touch the Adobe software issues and the intrusive iTunes which also seems to want to do a whole lot of rebooting.  Personally I think at heart, it is because both of these companies DO specialize in running on Mac/Apple technology. Obviously the latter IS an Apple product and Adobe originally focused on Apple and only later moved their Photoshop et al to PC.  I think there is still a Mac mindset over there with the way Adobe software doesn’t always play very friendly with PCs.  Probably need to troubleshoot the Photoshop app. When I launch that, I have one proc go to max the whole time the app is open.

Anyway, I resolved the problem with a quick test as suggested with the testing in safe mode.  Downloaded the NirSoft app – OfficeIns.  Fired it up and found the offending add-ins. I went through and just modified the Outlook startup mode on those troubled Adobe and Apple software pieces. Moved them to Load on Demand and changed them to Connected – NO. Not sure if I needed to go that far, but it solved the problem.

I’ll keep the OfficeIns program handy if I went too far with the Adobe and iTunes programs. Oh and TeamViewer – disabled that one altogether. Problem solved. Outlook works great – no slowdowns anymore. It’s Geek sauce.