I've had no problems with windows mail before but now whenever I try to open it a second time I get the following message.

'Windows Mail could not be Started because another Instance of it is still running on your computer. Please log off of Windows, and then restart Windows Mail. If this Continues then Restart your Computer.'

I do this and it opens up the first time but but when I try again it fails to open and I get the same message.

Help appreciated please.

The problem is caused when Windows Mail does not close down fully even though you've closed it. This means it's still running even though it's not actually open -- and you can't have two instances of it running at the same time.

Two possible causes for this:

1. The "search indexer" may be preventing Windows Mail from closing properly. Easiest fix in that case is to turn it off:

The proper way to turn off SearchIndexer is:

* Go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services.
* Right-click on Windows Search and disable it.

2. If the above doesn't fix it, your antivirus email scanning component may be preventing Windows Mail from closing properly, in which case you need to disable that particular component. You can still scan email attachments on demand yourself once you've saved them as a file on your PC.

This post has been edited by pip22: May 5 2008, 03:57 AM

Thank you for the reply but I've been unable to fix the problem.
I turned the Windows Live OneCare virus scanner off but it made no difference. I also tried to disable the Search Indexer but when I right click on it I get the properties dialog box and cannot find an option to disable/turn it off.

This same problem is cropping up everywhere at the moment. Does anyone know what Microsoft say about it?