Outlook Express Email problem

[Station]

It came with Explorer 6. I have been to their newsgroups and see others with the same problem and they have received no answers, as usual.
I type a fairly long Email then , just as I reach the end, a message comes up that I have commited an "illegal error" and it locks up. I have to close the error message and thus, I lose my letter. I know that someone here can help me. :confused: Thanks John

[rip_1956]

I don't have a fix, but until you find one, here's my suggestion:
Type your letter in notepad first, then copy/paste into Outlook. Keep notepad open until your letter is sent.

I had to resort to that with hotmail because it sometimes would 'timeout' and log me out, making me lose what I typed.

How long is your "... fairly long Email " ? What version windows? ...

Maybe go back to Explorer version 5.x???

[Station]

Rip,
I vowed I would do something like this the last time it happened (using Word or Notepad) Email is so convenient though, it seems to be just an added bother. I thought it was just an intermittent thing, so I fell foul of this fault again.
My slow typing probably makes all my Emails seem long to me. Why the "time out"? To remember what you said in a letter, and having to type it all again, is the annoying part. :O) I don't know if I can go back to Explorer and Express 5? Is it possible that this is the problem?
Thanks, John

[rraehal]

I use outlook express 6 on windows 98 and do not have this problem. I also use OE 6 on a windows 2000 pc and XP pc and do not have this issue. On my WinME box I sometimes crash.

This is the issue with WinMe:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,10816,00.asp

Is this your problem? Look at your system resources while in outlook every so often to see if they are dropping and what the System Monitor says.

[rmanet]

Originally posted by Station
It came with Explorer 6. I have been to their newsgroups and see others with the same problem and they have received no answers, as usual.
I type a fairly long Email then , just as I reach the end, a message comes up that I have commited an "illegal error" and it locks up. I have to close the error message and thus, I lose my letter. I know that someone here can help me. :confused: Thanks John

Hotmail and most of the other free e-mail providers log you out after a certain time - security issues they say....

I had, a long time ago, a problem because I had a conflict with the modem and it was somehow kicking me out when OE was "checking" mail while I was typing - sometimes I lost the dialup too - using cable now.

you using dialup or cable, and when Outlook Express locks up does your machine lock up or just the program itself? maybe that will point you in the right direction?

rraehal - that's a good article - I do have ME on my kids machines and if working with large graphic files and have found the OS doesn't seem to free up RAM even though I've got 256meg or more in each - some of the image files are scans of 40-80 megs size - figured one day I'd get a freeware program to free up ram and do it for me?

am I right in thinking along those lines?

p.s. didn't mean to start another thread - if so ignore the question and I'll goof around with those computers next time I have the problem, doesn't happen often anyway. :t

[Eric Legge]

OE often goes wrong if its Inbox.dbx and/or Deleted Items.dbx files get too large.

Both can keep growing even if items are deleted, or the Deleted Items category is set to clear on closing the program.

I make a backup of these files in the Windows\Application Data\ Identities\Outlook Express folder by using the Replicator from http://www.karenware.com/ before I download email, then if anything goes wrong, I delete those two files. Windows creates blanks to which the backups can be restored.

Otherwise, if something goes wrong and deletiing those files doesn't work, I remove OE, delete its folder and reinstall it.

One or other of those two methods always get OE back working for me.

Eric,

http://www.legge40.freeserve.co.uk/BuyerBeware.htm

[Station]

I didn't know that there were any further postings to this thread. I was only notified of the first one.

I will try re-installing OE and a few of the other suggestions you have made. I don't keep much in the Inbox and do a regular of the Deleted items. I don't use Hot mail, but I have friends who send "things" using it. I usually dump them after a quick look. But then, you say deleted items don't really go? So could it be these sometimes large files that are causing the problem?
Thank you Eric for the Karen ware site. I will have a look at it. Thanks again for all of your help.
John

[Enya]

I had a similar problem. It happened when I was trying to add a signature or sometimes when I would just press ENTER in the body of an e-mail. I did find the patch M$ had to for it.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;331923

But... unfortunately it didn't help me much. :rolleyes: I still get the same problem from time to time.

Although, I did notice that when you have plain text message, there is much less problems like this.