email crashes Outlook Express 5.5

[frankc]

For the second time in as many weeks, I've received an email with code that crashes OE when that email is being downloaded.[nbsp][nbsp]Problem is that without FQ's intervention (thank God for FQ!) all the emails after that bad one are unretrievable.

I thought OE used to let you just download headers and selectively retrieve/delete them, but that feature is not available any more.[nbsp][nbsp]I know I could use my Onebox.com account to download them and leave them on the server, and try to determine which one is crashing OE, but without a way to delete a single email from the pile, I'm still stranded.

FWIW, all emails must be retrieved by this computer as they're for my company.

Thoughts?[nbsp][nbsp]Suggestions?[nbsp][nbsp]HAAAAALLLLPPPP!

[nbsp][nbsp]Frank

[Justin]

I'd make sure you have disabled all scripting in Outlook. There is no practical reason to allow VBScript/JScript/etc in an email, and the only things I've ever seen it used for are virus... I personally tell Outlook not to allow HTML, but it ignores me most of the time... but the scripting is all turned off. I don't think I've ever seen Outlook crash (I'm using Express, as I have personally determined that it's better than Outlook 2000)...

You might also try an IE update -- sometimes there can be code (JavaScript usually) that can crash IE, and of course Outlook renders it's HTML in IE. A crash there would cause Outlook to crash...

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Justin Nelson
SFE Software (http://www.sfesoftware.com)

[frankc]

Hi, Justin![nbsp][nbsp]Unless I'm missing something in OE, there's no way to turn off scripts just in email.[nbsp][nbsp]Thinking it might be linked to IE, I set 'em to "notify" when a script attempts to run; that, however, makes IE nearly unuseable as even entering the forums here invoke two script notifications (as does each page fwd/back command in IE through the forums, my Excite home page, and *lots* of other places).

Saw the message re Outlook "hanging", so will turn on the troubleshooting checkbox next time I have a problem.

One email that nuked OE was an email change notification from Infopop.

I entered a bug report at Microsoft's website yesterday.

OE/IE/Windows is fully updated except for a few things that I can't imagine affecting this problem.

Thanks for the suggestions...I hope this is solved (quickly (but then, it IS Microsoft![nbsp][nbsp]:)[nbsp][nbsp]) as it's apparently becoming a real problem.

[nbsp][nbsp]Frank

[Justin]

You don't have to break IE to tighten down OE. Go to Tools --> Options, hit the Security tab, and select the "Restricted Sites" zone. This causes your emails to be more restricted. Then in your IE, you can use your normal "Internet Zone" settings for browsing.

The Restricted zone disables scripting, ActiveX, and so on. It's not a perfect solution but it does allow a bit of customisation.

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Justin Nelson
SFE Software (http://www.sfesoftware.com)

[frankc]

Ooooooo...cool![nbsp][nbsp]There's not a *bit* of help as to what that does (F1 says Click this to change the settings for your security zones).[nbsp][nbsp]Thanks, Microsloppy...[nbsp][nbsp]<img src="http://www.aota.net/ubb/confuse.gif" alt=":/" width=15 height=15>

Thanks, Justin!

[nbsp][nbsp]Frank