I have been jacking around with this for the last month with no luck.  Deleted the pst files. Tried the /resetnavpane switch - same message.  Uninstalled and reinstalled Office 2010 Pro twice - same message.  Been searching all over the web trying to find the answer to what should be a simple question, yet nobody seems to have the answer.

Can you please tell me what will fix this issue once and for all, if in fact it CAN be fixed?

Regards,

Mike

Hello,

do you get an error message when starting Outlook? If yes please post the error message.

Greetings,

Toni

Hi, Toni.

I get a window that says "Cannot start Microsoft Outlook". Event Viewer posts no relevant messages in either the App log or the Sys log. No error codes appear -- only the window telling me that Outlook won't start.  Not much to go on there ...

I've been googling and looking at various MS sites for the past couple of weeks, but can't seem to find anything that conclusively says what causes it or how it can be fixed.

Kind regards,

Mike

Hello,

are you using Outlook with PSTs only or do you have an Exchange Server in place?

Have you tried creating a new MAPI profile? (Just for testing)

Greetings,

Toni

Hi, Toni.

This is a simple Outlook 2010 setup to mail.google.com using IMAP, running from my little laptop. It worked fine for a few months, and then it stopped working with the error message previously mentioned.

I first renamed the PST files, then moved them to another folder entirely, and finally deleted the folder entirely from within Application Data. At this point in time there should be NO Microsoft Outlook data in any of the folders.

I thought about uninstalling MS Office again, going into the registry and pulling out anything that is even remotely connected to MS office, and then reinstalling. Then I began to wonder why I was going through all this? This is apparently a common issue, given some years of posts on the same topic, and yet Microsoft has posted no definitive solution to it.

Makes open source look better by the minute ...

BTW, I checked into MS support and found that Microsoft wants to charge me $39 for a chat session to discuss the issue.  Given what they charge for the full-blown Office 2010 Suite, this seems a bit over the top.

Hello,

Outlook tries to find the PST file because the path stands in the MAPI profile. Please try to delete this profile (Control Center -> Mail) and to recreate.

Greetings,

Toni

Hello.

This gets more interesting by the minute. 

When I click on "Mail" in Control Panel, I get a window that says "Your system needs more memory or system resources. Close some windows and try again." So there's no way I can view or change the MAPI profile at this time.

No other applications indicate any memory constraints or issues, so once again I'm suspecting that the issue related only to Microsoft Outlook.

I think that I'll uninstall Outlook, clean out the registry, then check Mail in Control Panel to see if it lets me in. If it does, I'll delete any MAPI profiles, reboot, then re-install Outlook and then see if I can get into Mail in the Control Panel. If I can, life is good. If not ... well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Thanks for your thoughts and advice, Toni.

Kind regards,

Mike

Hi, Tony.

Just as an FYI ... after I uninstalled MS Office Pro Plus 2010, cleaned out the registry of anything that said "Outlook", rebooted, and reinstalled Office ... it's still failing when I try to click Mail from within Control Panel. The error message is the same -- "Your system needs more memory ..." etc.

I'm hoping that you have a magic bullet for this, otherwise I will have to back up my boot drive, wipe it, and reinstall from scratch.

Thanks and Regards,

Mike

Hello,

just as a thought: have you tried applying SP1 for Office 2010?

Greetings,

Toni

Hi, Toni.

Yes, I did re-apply every possible patch after the Office uninstall / reinstall, but they did no good. 

What DID help was the message I got when I tried to open Mail in Control Panel. I searched on that and came upon the following answer from Wakatashi on 20 Oct 2010:

"I renamed the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem to "Windows Messaging Subsystem OLD" (no need to do anything in HKLM in my case).  Then I was able to open the "Mail" Control Panel and create a new profile.  Nice one!"

I did that and then was able to bring up the Mail icon immediately. Apparently there was corruption of some kind in that key. Anyway, I can now work with Outlook again and won't have to uninstall / reinstall the OS to fix Microsoft's buggy software.

Thanks, Toni, and have a great day!

Mike

• Marked as answer by memartin_48 Monday, September 05, 2011 11:58 AM
• Edited by memartin_48 Monday, September 05, 2011 12:00 PM

Thanks a ton!  This helped out so much. 

-X

"I renamed the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem to "Windows Messaging Subsystem OLD" (no need to do anything in HKLM in my case). " 

The above fix worked for me with an install of Office University 2010 on a new tower running Win 8.

Check your updates for KB2956128 and see if it is loaded twice, if it is, remove one and try, if not remove other and try.  Also, this week it happened again with KB2956203.

Please advise if this fixes it.