OE 5 - Switching identities locks up OE & it vanishes, but still there

[CincyScott]

Got a weird one here, that I've never encountered nor even heard of before. After being up and running for a while, using OE, following links to sites in IE, etc., any attempt to switch identities to check my other accounts causes OE to simply disappear (as it normally does when switching IDs, only it never comes back). It's still there, because I can see it in the ctrl-alt-del Close Program dialog and in procview. It refuses to shut down--neither the Close Program dialog nor EndItAll on aggressive setting can close it. When I go to restart Windows (ver. 98SE), I get a series of "This program is not responding . . ." dialogs, among which is one for "OutlookExpressHiddenWindow." Hidden window? What's up with that? Has OE become a Delphi app?

Trying to run it again yields an "Another instance is running, please shut down . . . yadda yadda" message. Naturally, trying to restart results in a black screen hang with a blinking cursor when the GUI exits, and the subsequent NDD run on restart because "Windows was not properly shutdown . . . " (I hate that f***ing message! As if, after years of using this POS OS, we hadn't figured out to exit gracefully when possible!).

The odd thing, and the only reason I can even get to my other IDs, is that if run OE immediately after startup, and immediately go to my other IDs, everything's copacetic. But, at some point during my use of OE/IE, something happens to trigger this behavior, the cause of which I have not been able to isolate as of yet.

Anybody encountered anything like this before? Perhaps there's an obscurely named KB article that would point me in the right direction? Any suggestions gladly welcomed.

Cheers,
Scott

 

[joegz]

That is weird but I wonder if that is a memory problem you are having? Have you tried checking your resource numbers before you do the switch identity in OE.

And as far as the f***ing message you can go into MSCONFIG - ADVANCED and select to "disable scandisk after bad shutdown" At least until the issue is resolved you can do away with the message. joegz
"Sometimes you just need to find out what it's not first to figure out what it is."

 

[CincyScott]

Thank you for your reply.

That's what I thought, as well. However, I have always made a habit of keeping the Resource Monitor on my taskbar, and when this trouble began that was one of the first things I checked. Other than the normal continual draining of resources over time by ill-written applications, no special decrease was noted when changing identities. In fact, no change was noted whatsoever, as long as that was the only activity undertaken. If I change IDs immediately after starting up, before doing anything else, no further resources are used than are normally used by OE. When OE eventually hangs, of course, those resources are never deallocated and returned to the system, which I'm sure has something to do with the shutdown problems.

As for the startup message, I am aware that I can rid myself of it by the expedient given. However, in such circumstances I am loath to do so, as a Windows abend is quite likely to leave files open which need to be diagnosed and corrected. In fact, the last time this happened, two lost clusters were found by NDD upon restart (which I had NDD correct). I would prefer to endure the asinine, arrogant presumptuousness of the developer who wrote that message, assuming that we are such stupid ninnies that we cannot figure out that a graceful shutdown is the only appropriate way to exit Windows. More appropriate would have been, "We realize that you had no opportunity to properly shut down Windows, because our damnable, unstable, pisspoor excuse for an operating system has hung on you yet again, for perhaps the ten-thousandth time. One of these days we will write an OS which is stable, and has a journaling file system, and yet does not break any of your key productivity applications or development environments, nor fail to support the thousands of dollars of hardware in which you have invested. In the meantime, we apologize for the sloppiness of our programming, and the apparent complete absence of any effort at quality control, and implore you, for your own sake, to please run a disk scan to ensure that this miserable excuse for an operating system has not permanently screwed up your hard drive. Thank you."

Now, that I could live with ;-). Thanks again for your reply.

Scott (Stepping down off soap box . . . )