address book & contact disappeared and cannot open new mail

Feonova · Monday, June 8th, 2009

The 1st strange thing that ocurred about 2 days prior, is all of names in the address book and contact list had rearranged themselves into a new alphabetical order, with last names first...which I don't even know how to do if I wanted to....?

Then in about 2 days, all had totally disappeared!!! The only message is the Outlook Express box with the yellow triangle icon that states "The address book failed to load. OE is incorrectly configured, please re-install." I have done nothing that I am aware of to create this problem. The only thing I did right before was delete numerous old emails from my inbox.

I can't even open new mail...with a message stating "There was an error opening this message".

I have attempted just about everything, including all systems settings both in the control panel and the OE account/options...etc.

Anyone has any suggestions...thanks

popowich · Saturday, June 13th, 2009

Hello,

It sounds like something very strange is going on with your Outlook Express.

Did you recently make any changes to your computer before the problem started?

Do you have anti-virus and anti-spyware software installed on your computer?

Have you tried to doing a Windows XP system restore to a point before the problem started?

Have you tried to reinstall Outlook Express? How to Reinstall Outlook Express (and Internet Explorer) - About Email

Please let us know if any of the suggestions help and if you are able to determine the specific problem/fix for the issue.

-Raymond

Feonova · Monday, June 15th, 2009

Hi Raymond,
Thanks for your reply...
1) No, I haven't made any changes to the computer
2) Yes, but it's the same one we've been using, Trend Micro, even disabled it
3) No to the XP restore
4) Yes to having to re-install OE.

My husband does all the computer stuff...and even he was baffled about this one.

Could Embarq be having problems? Now for the 2nd time in the last 3 weeks, my sent email is stuck in the Outbox (been over 4 hours and tried to resend but keep getting the pop server error message). Some are just 2 sentence replies, nothing bulky or complex...? But then my Hotmail account works just fine and it has to use Embarq as DSL.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say someone is messing with me...like my computer has a poltergeist or prankster hacker....?
Thanks, Feonova