Cannot acess email in Outlook 2003..handle is invalid?

[stratus595]

I was sitting at my main computer, Dimension 9150, and all of a sudden came the blue screen which mentioned something about a "kernel error" so I restarted the computer and everything rebooted okay. Opened up my Outlook but cannot access my email that is there. It shows one new email in the Inbox which I know there are more because I have been seeing them coming in as I've been working on figuring this out. Trend Micro is scanning them as they come in so it is receiving them.

On my mail tab where the mail would normally appear to the right, I have the gray screen display and it reads the following:

Unable to display the folder. The file C:\Documents and Settings\Leslie Hardin\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst could not be accessed. The handle is invalid.

I did a detect and repair and that didn't work. I did a system restore to just right before the blue screen thing happened and that didn't work. I have my backup .pst file in a different folder than what it lists above anyway but I don't have the option to import that folder. Under file the only things that drop down are backup, print, offline and exit. It won't give the me import option so I could try and import the last known backup .pst file.

All of my other info is there such as contacts, the only other thing that is messed up are tasks.

On that gray screen it says: Unable to display the folder. The file C:\Documents and Settings\Leslie Hardin\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst could not be accessed. Close any application that is using this file and then try again.

There isn't any other application using this file. I checked the other computer and no so it's not opened anywhere else.

Can anyone help?

[glc]

Have you searched for outlook.pst yet? What version Outlook?

[stratus595]

After much searching and reading on the Microsoft.com website I found the solution and it fixed it. Whew!

So here's the solution if anyone needs it and I learned something new once again. Dang! Why can't I ever learn stuff from OTHER people's problems? Why does it feel like I am always the teacher?? LOL

So Outlook has a self installed program called Inbox Repair Tool and you can read all about it and how to run it here.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272227/en-us


Thanks once again glc....thankfully I was able to get this one resolved.