Hi,

I am having a real issue with Outlook 2010 (32 bit) and accessing archive pst files that are stored on a network share on our SBS server.

Like many we operate almost soley using email and this creates ever larger mailboxes, so most items are archived after six-months, but still need to be accessed occassionaly.

Each user has a series of archive pst files that are stored on our server in a common location for ease, but since switching some users to Office 2010 we now have a major issue that if a user opens one of the archive pst files from its network location they can view everything in all folders of the archive, but after accessing a couple of messages Outlook "stops responding" and totally locks.

It seems that Outlook is trying to access the message in the archive pst, but cannot complete this and even restarting Outlook doesn't solve this as on restart the splash screen sticks at loading profile and never restarts! Worse yet this lock-up in Outlook actually prevents Windows 7 from closing down, so when you try to restart the PC to resolve the problem Windows 7 just sits at "shutting down" and never closes (left for 20 mins), so a reset or hard reboot is then needed.

Has anyone seen similar issues with pst files created from Outlook 2007?

Is this issue due to network location of pst's?

Anyone got any ideas, as this issue drives me nuts when it happens, which thankfully is rare as we dont access archives often and can do so fine if needed from a PC running Outlook 2007.

Thanks

Ridesy

Even though many people operate with PSTs on network shares, it is not supported and Microsoft recommends avoiding it.  According to what I've read, the I/O operations used for network access are not quite like local I/O and there is the possibility of damaging a network-accessed PST.

While I can't answer your question, I'd recommend keeping PSTs on a local drive and use scheduled tasks at boot time to make copies of local PSTs to network drives for backup.

Hi,

 

I am writing to see how everything is going with this issue. Is the problem resolved? If there is anything I can do for you, please feel free to let me know.

 

Sally Tang

TechNet Subscriber Support in forum

If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com  

 

Hi,

 

As I have not heard from you for several days. I will go ahead and close this thread. If this issue is not resolved or you have any questions, please feel free to reply to us and this thread will be re-opened.

 

Best Regards,

 

Sally Tang

TechNet Subscriber Support in forum

If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com  

I'm having this exact same issue with the exception being that even archives created with 2010 it still locks up over the network with files over 1.2 gb.  This was never an issue with Outlook 2007 and archives going over 6gb.  Why is it a problem now with Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit edition and Outlook 2010 32 bit?  The archives behave fine when on a local drive but only when trying to use them over a network share will it be a problem.  They need to be on the network as that is backed up.  Local clients simply are not backed up.

Just for the record, I also see this problem with Outlook 2010 32-bit on Windows 7 Professional 32-bit.  The PST file is 760MB and when running it from the network share (Server 2003), the Outlook program freezes.  It also results in the need to hard power off the computer because it cannot complete a normal shutdown.  Task killing Outlook doesn't even help.

I have tried exporting and importing into native Outlook 2010 PST files without any difference.  I was forced to move the file to the local drive then write a script to backup the PST to the server daily (terrible workaround).

I hope Microsoft replaces the antiquated PST file with something natural to networking in the next release.

If anyone has a better workaround, please post!

-Steve

Just for the record, I also see this problem with Outlook 2010 32-bit on Windows 7 Professional 32-bit.  The PST file is 760MB and when running it from the network share (Server 2003), the Outlook program freezes.  It also results in the need to hard power off the computer because it cannot complete a normal shutdown.  Task killing Outlook doesn't even help.

I have tried exporting and importing into native Outlook 2010 PST files without any difference.  I was forced to move the file to the local drive then write a script to backup the PST to the server daily (terrible workaround).

I hope Microsoft replaces the antiquated PST file with something natural to networking in the next release.

If anyone has a better workaround, please post!

-Steve

• Proposed as answer by dsouthard Monday, January 24, 2011 10:24 PM

JUST FOR THE RECORD, I TOO AM HAVING THIS EXACT SAME PROBLEM, ANYONE HAVE A SOLUTION YET???

We are also having this problem.  It's more than slightly annoying since Outlook does not walk one through location options when creating archives as it did in previous versions.  As a result, Outlook defaults all pst files to the \My Documents\Outlook Files requiring a hands-on assistance to each user when they suddenly cannot use Outlook.

Furthermore, even after you remove the archive from a user's profile the error message "Files of this type cannot be made available offline".  You have to not only delete the file (which can be easily done with Outlook open - it's not part of the profile) but empty the Recycle Bin as well before the error message will go away.

Hi,

I am having the same issues with outlook locking up (Not Responding) when trying to access a .pst.  Whenever it does lockup, I can't kill the process in the task manager and it requires a re-boot.  During the shut down process, it just hangs on "logging off" and i have to do a hard shutdown.  Any help on this is much appreciated.

-Koby 

Must admit we NEVER solved this issue and the wierd thing is that it actually affects only some PC's!!

We can access the exact same archive pst files on the same network share from some PC's, but with same user logged in on another PC (both running 32 bit Outlook 2010 on Win7 64bit) it locks and needs hard re-boot.

Go figure that one!

Our methodology now is knowing which PC's will access archives, we use those for that job when needed - far from ideal, but works.

I guess the earlier suggestion of : "I'd recommend keeping PSTs on a local drive and use scheduled tasks at boot time to make copies of local PSTs to network drives for backup" would be most sensible.

Ridesy

Having the same issue here.  Has anyone seen a resolution on this?

Jim

Chiming in as well-- same problem! Additionally, when Outlook is in this locked-up state, you can't create a New Message or you get the error "The messaging interface has returned an unknown error"

Resource Monitor says that Outlook is running normally and not waiting for any resources. Trying to "End" or "End Process Tree" from there doesn't work, just as it doesn't from Task Manager. How is it even possible for a program to lock-up this hard!? Heh.

Anything?

Ok, well, I just removed the network PST files from Outlook, which has temporarily solved the problem. I fully understand that opening a PST file from a network drive isn't supported, but at the same time it shouldn't catastrophically lock-up Outlook so badly that a hard boot is required to kill it! At least pop up a warning before a user opens it! Especially since so many employers (mine, for example) move their users My Documents folder to a network drive, so the average user might not even realize the PST is on the network drive.

My question is why Outlook is allowing you to save a PST file to a location that isn't supported in the first place?  In prior versions, PST files were save to %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.  The default location for PSTs is now the user's My Document\Outlook Files.

I am now having the same issue with outlook 2010 connecting to SBS2003 box, but my pst / ost file is local to the computer.

Outlook hangs on start   (processing.........)

Start outlook in safe made and opens and I can disable addins, but still will not start.

Delete the mail profile and rename my local .ost file and it will cerate a new one after I add a new mail profile.

Can open outlook in normal mode but then locks up syncing with the server ? 

Its a big mail file but its been bigger before, why now has this stopped working ?

I have not done a restart on the machine for a while just been putting it in sleep mode at the end of the day I noticed that there had been some office 2010 updates done on the 03 March 2011.

Should I un install theses ?

Now I can not even add a new mail profile because the microsoft outlook credentials locks up now too ....

I am now using remote web workplace to access may mail file, please HELP.

I am now having the same issue with outlook 2010 connecting to SBS2003 box, but my pst / ost file is local to the computer.

Outlook hangs on start   (processing.........)

Start outlook in safe made and opens and I can disable addins, but still will not start.

Delete the mail profile and rename my local .ost file and it will cerate a new one after I add a new mail profile.

Can open outlook in normal mode but then locks up syncing with the server ? 

Its a big mail file but its been bigger before, why now has this stopped working ?

I have not done a restart on the machine for a while just been putting it in sleep mode at the end of the day I noticed that there had been some office 2010 updates done on the 03 March 2011.

Should I un install theses ?

Now I can not even add a new mail profile because the microsoft outlook credentials locks up now too ....

I am now using remote web workplace to access may mail file, please HELP.

• Proposed as answer by bluestang_92 Thursday, March 24, 2011 7:09 PM

I have found the issue to be with offline files.  If you disable offline files, it will resolve the issue.

Run “c:\windows\system32\gpedit.msc”

Navigate to “Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates, Network, Offline Files”

Change “Allow or Disallow use of the Offline Files feature” to Disabled.

Reboot

 

I have found the issue to be with offline files.  If you disable offline files, it will resolve the issue.

Run “c:\windows\system32\gpedit.msc”

Navigate to “Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates, Network, Offline Files”

Change “Allow or Disallow use of the Offline Files feature” to Disabled.

Reboot

 

• Marked as answer by RidesyJPR Wednesday, March 30, 2011 8:44 AM

Hi Bluestang_92,

You are a star. I have been looking for the answer to this issue ever since we got new laptops in december.

Well done.

I have disabled the offline files and can now access the pst over the network!

 

Regards

JD

I have found the issue to be with offline files.  If you disable offline files, it will resolve the issue.

Run “c:\windows\system32\gpedit.msc”

Navigate to “Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates, Network, Offline Files”

Change “Allow or Disallow use of the Offline Files feature” to Disabled.

Reboot

 

Bluestang,

Found this definitely works, so is a solution for many - so thanks for that.

To MS guys who should be monitoring this post - can we get this issue sorted, as a number of our users with this issue are of course the staff who have laptops for a reason (i.e. travelling a lot) and they need offline files enabled in order to keep documents they regularly access up to date and also backed-up when they return to office!

Surely a patch/update can be released that resolves the conflict between having offline files enabled and being able to access pst files on network drives/shares???

Ridesy

This message is directed at Microsoft Support & Development

These are the steps we've taken to test this issue to see what does and does nto work.

1.  Opened .pst located on the network with Outlook 2010. 

This results in a non responding outlook.  You can close Outlook 2010 within task manager, but the task does not go away, in fact if you try to open Outlook again, it sits at "Loading Profile" and Outlook doesn't load.  When you try to logoff/restart/or shutdown the computer after this issue, Windows 7 just sits at the logging off screen and never logs off, shuts down or restarts.  The only way to shut the comptuer down is to force the power off by holding in the power button.

2.  Copied the .pst file from network to local disk and opened with Outlook 2010

This results in the .pst file working fine and Outlook does not lock up.  This is not a good sulution however being users depend on this file being backed up on a daily basis.

3.  Disabled offline files and opened the .pst file from the network via Outlook 2010

This results in the .pst file working fine and Outlook does not lock up.  This is also not a good solution being our users are mostly mobile (laptop) users which depend on offline files when they are away from the network.

This was never an issue with Windows XP Professional and Outlook 2007 or Windows 7 and Outlook 2007 so I have to place the blame on Outlook 2010.  Please take this issue seriously as you can see several people are having identical issues. From what I can tell there has not been a post from Microsoft regarding this issue and your users on this board would really appreciate if someone from Microsoft would respond.  Please take the time to deal and respond to this extremely important issue ASAP.

Thank you

 

 

I too have been having this issue with Ofice 2010. Only on computers that have an archive.pst file. I will try the offline files setting tomorrow. If I remove the archive.pst file from the profile all my problems go away. We need the archived messages though. One interesting thing is that I had to run scanpst on both files many times to get all the errors fixed.

Any other help would be appreciated...

Unfortunately the off line files setting didn't help. The problem seems to be more with the auto archive function. When I manually run archive, an error occurs. None of our system with 2010 are auto archiving even though they are all set to do it every 14 days. When i l;ooked closer at the archive.pst from the manual archive operation, I see that an error occured and the files were never moved from the original folders. Sounds like a software bug. Anyone have any thoughts on this....

Add to this that if you follow the Best Practices under Windows SBS 2008 (running Windows Server 2008), the DEFAULT location for My Documents is on the server via Redirected Files and then available to the user automatcially via Offline Files.

I have had huge problems with this, never realized until I read this post that it was specifically caused by being on a network location. When it hangs after a few minutes/hours of access, like others we can't reboot the computer without performing a hard shutdown. Any attempt to kill the Outlook task or end the process fails. Many of our systems run RAID that fails when performing a hard shutdown, requiring a 12+ hour rebuild, during which the computer is extremely slow and data is at risk. So this bug in MS functioning that is new to 2010 actually forces RAID rebuilds, causing massive performance degradation.

We will try forcing the PST files to be local, but what do you do for a user who has 2 systems - a desktop for use in the office and a laptop/tablet for use on the road? That's a pretty common configuration and with modern hard drives, even the laptops can easily carry around the user's archived PST files, but it sounds like keeping these in sync via the network is not supported.

Horrible problem.

Well that's completely unacceptable. That means that laptop/tablet users can't archive their mail.

The recomended/best practices, ACCORDING TO MICROSOFT, is to use Redirected Folders and Offline Files with laptop users. As the mail file grows to multiple GB's, we assume it should be archived down. We generally do this more by aging than by size (anything older than a year or 18 months), but it works out to about 2 GB. If we didn't archive those files, when a user connects a new computer (common), it would need to sync an ever increasing mail file.

Where should that archive be stored so the user can access it?

Plus, many of our users have both a desktop for use in the office and laptop for use when traveling. Offline files for network access allows them to stay in sync via the network automatically without needing to even know it's happening in the background, but still be portable when they hit the road with their laptops.

Further, this problem appears to be new to Office 2010. We never had this problem with network locations with PST archive files under Outlook 2007.

True enough. Msft needs to give us some input on this, other than they don't support it. It worked fine for us in 2007 also.

Just want to add that it happens even when trying to Archive on local disk if you have tried to archive before on network drive. It is becoming major issue for us.

Sally,

This issue has not been resolved. Given the cost of the software, not supporting it is not a resolve.

Grant

I too have the same issue - and agree fully with grantpsd.  Not supporting is not acceptable.  Nor is it acceptable to ask the President of the company to not have all his files available offline - just not a proposition I want to bring to his desk.

If I delete the archive.pst from the server, will this get me back to working again?  I can let the inbox build for a while until this is resolved, but so far I have lost many hours trying to figure out why I was having these issues on one machine only.

How about stepping backwards to Office 2007 - what issues will I run into?

 

Bolt,

Cannot be 100% certain, but for me accessing the same archives in same network location from a laptop running Office 2007 and with offline files enabled is no issue at all, so a rollback to Outlook 2007 should resolve the issue.

Darn shame that you have to consider rolling back mobile users to a previous version, but MS don't seem to be reading thsi thread any longer and a resolution seems as far off as it was when I first posted 10 months ago!

Ridesy

If they don't want look backwards - lets bringit to their attention as a semi-fresh post.  Yeah, I don't really think that I should have to go backwards.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/outlook/thread/1a44ae1f-92c2-4d2d-bda0-cf91e025d99e

My understanding is that Microsoft has *never* supported *.pst files over the network. I have had to repair these things for over 10 years now. This is not a new phenomenon with Office 2010. As was advised by others in this thread, the best bet is to have these files reside locally. If there is still a problem with the *.pst file once this is done, it is likely corrupt. Simply importing the corrupt file contents to a new *.pst does the job most times. One nice thing is that our processors are faster, and RAM and storage are relatively cheap, so this repair on a large file takes minutes or hours rather than a few days that it used to take.

I have had exactly this same issue.  I have tried moving the .pst files to a local folder, and still have the same issue though not quite as frequently.

Curiously, I don't have this issue on my XP machine running Outlook 2010 with the same .pst files.  I have migrated everything to brand new Outlook 2010 ODF .pst files, and it makes no difference.  This problem is keeping our entire enterprise from moving to Windows 7 from our XP Pro platform. 

Is there a fix in the works?  We do not currently have another solution besides Windows XP with Office / Exchange, and would like to  not have to look at other other options.

Regards,

TS

Any news on this problem yet? Installing sp1 for office 2010 didn't solve the problem.

 

Regards, Andy

Microsoft has answered this issue at http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-outlook/outlook-2010-email-archive-freezing-on-network/ea688122-6290-4e9d-b5fe-2ba59852f149  

They really think they have solved the problem with this response. 

Anyway, another workaround is to provide remote desktop access into "classic" versions of Outlook (those where "unsupported and not recommended" network archives work just fine) for vintage message retention. 

It's not so much that it isn't supported as the fact that it worked for years, and something has obviously been changed. This is compounded by the fact that the default path for all *.pst files was changed in Outlook 2010 to %userprofile%\Documents\Outlook Files.  When combined with the best practices of redirecting user folders, one has the potential to lock up multiple users because Outlook encourages the end-user to do something that, btw, isn't supported.  Executives don't like hearing that.

Microsoft has answered this issue at http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-outlook/outlook-2010-email-archive-freezing-on-network/ea688122-6290-4e9d-b5fe-2ba59852f149  

They really think they have solved the problem with this response. 

Anyway, another workaround is to provide remote desktop access into "classic" versions of Outlook (those where "unsupported and not recommended" network archives work just fine) for vintage message retention. 

What I don't understand with this is that the MS Knowledge base article this "answer" refers to makes no mention of how Enterprise or any other network administartors are meant to handle archiving of emails in Outlook 2010?

Great, so we OFFICIALLY know that pst file are not supported on network drives and they give a good detailed explanation of why, but are they really suggesting that we never archive old mail when the default in Outlook is to archive items over six months old?

I assume that this is not a serious option, so where are we supposed to store archive mail?

Are large Enterprise set-ups really archiving Outlook items on each and every PC in their networks???

Come on MS Technical guys - can we have a straight answer to a simple question?

"Using Outlook 2010 - where should we be setting as the location for archiving, as the thought of Microsoft, IBM or any large company having individual archives on every users PC just sound daft!?"

Ridesy

Hi, Does anyone know if it is possible to change the default path for archiving in Outlook 2010? We have a server with redirected "My Documents" and when a user archive to default path the PST goes to a networkpath and the clien hangs.  a change of the path would make it easyer for the users to archive there mailboxes.

Solution is to move the .pst files to a different folder on the server that is not one of your redirected folders.  Open the .pst file(s) from that locaiton and Outlook will not lock up.

You can specify the location of the archive file in Outlook 2010 Advanced Options, Auto-Archive Settings button.

Solution is to move the .pst files to a different folder on the server that is not one of your redirected folders.  Open the .pst file(s) from that locaiton and Outlook will not lock up.

You can specify the location of the archive file in Outlook 2010 Advanced Options, Auto-Archive Settings button.

• Proposed as answer by Thomas Moats Tuesday, January 31, 2012 12:53 PM
• Unproposed as answer by Thomas Moats Tuesday, January 31, 2012 12:53 PM

Actually, this DOES NOT work.  I currently run a share for offline files that redirects our my documents folder to the server.  I run a second share that is strictly for pst files but is not a redirected folder.  I am running offline files to the first folder.  My Outlook locks up all the time.

Microsoft's solution is actually something they built into Exchange Server 2010.  With Exchange 2010 they want you to use the Exchange environment to store archives and not use pst files.  We are in a university environment and this is not an option for us.  Here is the link to the TechNet data.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979795.aspx

Actually, this DOES NOT work.  I currently run a share for offline files that redirects our my documents folder to the server.  I run a second share that is strictly for pst files but is not a redirected folder.  I am running offline files to the first folder.  My Outlook locks up all the time.

Microsoft's solution is actually something they built into Exchange Server 2010.  With Exchange 2010 they want you to use the Exchange environment to store archives and not use pst files.  We are in a university environment and this is not an option for us.  Here is the link to the TechNet data.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979795.aspx

• Proposed as answer by Thomas Moats Tuesday, January 31, 2012 12:55 PM
• Unproposed as answer by Thomas Moats Wednesday, July 18, 2012 11:32 AM

We figured out what was causing my Outlook 2010 to lock-up.  Too many folders under the inbox.  I folder all projects and keep anything that is relevant.  I had not archived in a while and one of my Techs suggested getting rid of some of those folders.  I did and the problem when away.  I allowed it to build back up and sure enough, it started locking up.  Went in and archived a bunch of folder and the problem went away again.

We figured out what was causing my Outlook 2010 to lock-up.  Too many folders under the inbox.  I folder all projects and keep anything that is relevant.  I had not archived in a while and one of my Techs suggested getting rid of some of those folders.  I did and the problem when away.  I allowed it to build back up and sure enough, it started locking up.  Went in and archived a bunch of folder and the problem went away again.

• Proposed as answer by Thomas Moats Wednesday, July 18, 2012 11:32 AM

I would like to add that this issue still exists in Outlook 2013

We have the exact same issues as the original poster

1. Outlook stops responding when accessing a network located pst file

2. When you relaunch Outlook it simply stays on the screen loading profile

3. You can't shutdown or log out of windows it hangs on either shutting down/logging off

We have to store pst files on a network location as users don't have access to any local drives also if you did store it on a local machine this wouldn't allow roaming.  PS the fault doesn't exist for the exact same users on windows XP machines using outlook 2010.

I will try some of the suggestions listed above as for use we do store the pst on the users home directory which is a redirect of the My documents folder and we also use offline files.  I will keep you posted which works for us (if any)

This solution works perfect.

Which solution works perfect?