Microsoft made some changes in SP1 which affected the memory management subsystem in Windows XP. It actually made it significantly slower when you do a large number of memory allocations/deallocations.

Before the hotfix it would take about 3-4 minutes to load Outlook but now it's around 30 seconds.

- Trevor

Have you actually got the fix? We haven't been able to get it yet.

Rob

Before the hotfix it would take about 3-4 minutes to load Outlook but now it's around 30 seconds.

30 seconds to load your email program? AFTER the fix? Wow. Glad I use Eudora.

Yeah. I know that it's sloooow. It's really quick after the first time however. Not sure why.
I'm not too happy with the fact that Outlook shoves everything into one huge PST file. It's around 1.5GB at the moment and it really doesn't like it.

- Trevor

Yeah. I've got the hotfix because a client wanted it. Wasn't that hard to get it off Microsoft though, just had to phone them up.
I can send it to you if you want it.

- Trevor

It is probably quicker the 2nd time around because it's not really closing down when you close the program. Just a guess.

Nah. It's definately not running as it's not showing up at all in the task manager.
I think it must be leaving the DLLs and various other bits in memory still so it doesn't need to load them again.

- Trevor

I'm not too happy with the fact that Outlook shoves everything into one huge PST file. It's around 1.5GB at the moment and it really doesn't like it.

You might want to think of a better way of dealing with the PST file soon. Outlook has a limit of 2gb on PST files, and hitting that limit will not result in a friendly warning, but instead a corrupted file.

Also. There is no magicial MS fix attached to this message, please keep moving on.

Ick, a 1.5Gb Access database (which is basically what a PST file is) that's asking for trouble...

Okay. Seperated old mail into different PST files and now it's a slightly more manageable 300MB.
Takes AGES for Outlook to compact the file though. Bit stuck with Outlook as it's the only thing that will synchronise with my PDA properly.

- Trevor

here are all the post-sp1 XP hotfixes.

Also, here is a version of windows update that lets you download each patch and hotfix. The trouble is, they don't always keep it up to date. But being able to download the patch executables is required when automating updates for multiple computers on a network.

That is good to know. Does that also apply to the 'archive' .pst files (I assume yes)?

-Zeke

Yes.

I'm not too happy with the fact that Outlook shoves everything into one huge PST file

Yuck! Another reason I stick to OE. I think it makes a different dbx file for each folder you have, and I keep a lot of folders. It certainly is slow to load all those 5000+ emails, though

According to Microsoft it's not actually a hard limit of 2GB. It's just not "guaranteed" to work for anything larger than 2GB. If it does go kaboom and break then also the chances of you recovering your email also are minimal after 2GB.
I like how they recommend you don't exceed this size since they know of problems with it but don't actually make Outlook TELL you.

- Trevor

This is why I use IMAP with my email server. That same pst file is a HELL of a lot smaller as email files on a linux server. And I can check my email and read old email with any imap mail client, unlike pop3 where you pull the email off the server and onto your local machine and therefore cannot read it with another machine (unless your leaving all copies on the server).

Well I have first hand experience of it going bang above about 2G. It seemed to be a bit less though. It could have been a 2 000 000 000 bytes maybe instead of 2 000 MB or 2GB. I'm pretty certain that it will definitely break though.

And their "fix" is simply a dodgy program that uncleanly cuts off a selected number of megabytes off the end. You then go and run the scanpst to fix the .pst that you just corrupted. And what you cut off you lose of course.

The program didn't even work for me so I wrote myself a new one to do the job for me (properly)

See
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;266709
and
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305108