After installing XP, I managed to install all the express updates and the drivers that came with the notebook. Things were going decently, but I'm having big problems with Outlook. I installed Outlook, and then I pasted in my old .PST file to the Outlook data directory. Outlook read it fine, but once I told it to send/receive, the receive process went INCREDIBLY slow. It basically redownloaded all the emails (maybe about 650 or so, I can't remember) that were already there (obviously, I set it to leave the messages on the server), but it took over three hours! Even with the fairly large number of emails, this does not seem right at all! Once that was finally done, I proceeded to manually delete all the duplicate emails (not fun).
To make matters worse, it refuses to send out emails. I'm like 99% sure that I have the same settings as before (before the virus, when everything worked normally), but when I test the settings or try to send out an email, I get the following message:
Task 'mail.mycompanysserver.com - Sending' reported error (0x80042109) : 'Outlook is unable to connect to your outgoing (SMTP) e-mail server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).'
I tried to find a solution online, and I found some stuff about ports (didn't have to before, but I tried changing it anyway and no luck), and about conflicts with MSN. If it makes a difference, I had installed Messenger Live (had an older non-Live version before), so I wondered if this might be creating the problem, but closing Messenger didn't help. Microsoft support provided a solution that involved going into Control Panel, going into Mail, and creating a new Profile. I haven't tried this because I'm afraid this means I'll end up having to redo the whole Outlook .PST file thing, meaning another 3 hours of redownloading emails followed by manually deleting them.
So the next thing I tried was Microsoft Update. It worked earlier (I got SP2 on it, and various other updates), but now when I try it (both Express and Custom), I get the "Checking for updates for your computer" type message with that animated bar, but it never finishes. I've left it for over 30 minutes! Interestingly, while this is happening, I can't close IE (or even Outlook), and Windows won't let me open Task Manager, so I'm forced to do a hard shut down.
I can't really remember, but at one point (after the most recent successful Windows Update, but before Update got funky), I MAY have installed an ActiveX controller of some sort. Unfortunately, I really can't remember what it was for, and I'm not even sure if I did this on my notebook or on another computer.
Please help! I've been without my notebook for over a week now, and I'm going absolutely crazy! I'm way behind in my work!
Edited by Nates, 09 May 2007 - 11:58 PM.
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