Outlook Express

[Kinson83]

Ok my friend has windows 98 and uses outlook express. Today she recieved text attachments and was unable to open them in outlook. So she saved them to her desktop and then tried to open them that way. She was unsuccessful at this too. She keeps recieveing illegal operation errors when she tries to open them in outlook and with a word processor. She can open other text documents with no problem, it was just the downloaded attachments. She forwarded the email to me and I was able to download and open the attachments without a hitch. I plan on updating everything on her machine tomorrow, as well as run scans and see if that will help. I don't use outlook, so therefore I don't really know anything about it. Does anyone know of any issues like this and possible fixes? They have all the proper file extensions btw. Thanks.

[GaryRouth]

Is everything OK - now that you've visited Windows Update?

There were some vulnerabilities that had to do with long filenames - that could lead to such errors [for example, see http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec.../ms98-008.mspx ]

If, just before having this problem with attachments, she upgraded to IE6/OE6, she might not be aware that it blocks certain attachment types by default. Here's a short blurb on that behavior (from KansasNet) ->
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"Common Problem, Unable to View Attachments
Q: Help! I cannot view attachments in my Outlook Express program. You may see a message at the top of the email saying, "OE removed access to the following unsafe attachments in your email: ..."
A: If you are using Outlook Express 6, by default the program will block access to certain email attachments. In order to resolve this problem, choose Tools-->Options. A window will open, choose the Security tab. Then uncheck the box which says "Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened which could potentially be a virus" then press OK.
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Another option to changing that setting in OE is to leave the behavior to block as the default - I think OE6 has the option to click on the message bar to allow the attachments to be opened on a case-by-case basis.

Of course, I imagine that you've already scanned for malware - but if not, give the machine a thorough round of scanning, just to be sure.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[Kinson83]

Thanks a lot for the info. I still have yet to actually sit down and take a look at the pc, but the link that you provided sounds like that's the problem. Thanks again for your help.