outlook express suddenly extremely slow

[Ryan2318]

hey for some reason suddenly since i guess the last 4 or 5 days outlook express has been very slow. and by very slow i mean 5 minutes or more to start up LITERALLY no exageration. It used to start up in like 5 seconds you know, but for some reason its extremely slow now and goes to where you think it froze and if you just keep waiting eventually it'll full start up.

what do you think the problem can be? 1 thing i noticed is that my hdd activity light blinked but not the fast way that normally happens. this was a very slow maybe half second to second intervals. almost as if the different parts of the file that is loaded was seperated somehow and the hard drive and trying to read all the fragmented parts. i don't know how this could be though. besides i have one drive for XP only and the other with all my files so its not like it could be really fragmented (nor have this happen so suddenly)

btw i'm not even starting anything else when i try to get this going. i used to be able to start this, aim, IE etc and have them all come up fast but now i just gotta sit and wait 5 minutes for this thing to load.

thanks for your help

[Trick000]

hard drive is fragmented, virtual memory settings have changed, hard drive is almost full, virus...

[bailey]

msn is having a problem the last few days, and is off right now

[Miz]

The first thing to try is ordinary computer maintenance.

First, get rid of any spyware you may have picked up. Download, install, immediately update and then run Spybot and/or AdAware (you can use them both.) Let whichever one you choose clean up any spyware it finds. I've seen spyware mess up OE in the way you're experiencing, specifically, Hotbar.

Then run Disk Cleanup - Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup.

Finally, run disk defrag, also located in System Tools.

[CarlS]

Check for a virus. Outlook Express on a friend's computer had slowed way down and I found a virus. The virus had also disabled ZoneAlarm and would not let Norton Antivirus scan. I spent about two hours getting rid of the virus and all has been working well for the past week.

[ktkendall]

What about that box that is checked by default under Tools>options>general tab that says "Automatically log on to Windows Messenger". If U don't need it to do that and it is checked, then uncheck it....