HI Gaucho,

1. An outlook profile is basically how Outlook bundles together lots of information that are pertinent to your "account." Creating an "identical" profile, in other words, one that has esentially the same information as before will work for testing purposes. You don't have to delete the old profile at all, but most people do in fact delete the old profile once they are confident it is no longer needed.

2. If you are having trouble finding scanpst.exe, try using the search function in start --> find/search. If this helps, mine is in C:\Program Files\Windows Messaging. The actual path depends on many variables .. but if you really can't find it, if you can find it on another PC, email it to yourself. It is a standalone file that doesn't have to be "installed"... just have to "run" it.

3. Detect and Repair, as far as I know, only attempts to repair program files. Since the *.PST file in question is a data file, it would not be part of this detect and repair process, though it should!

4. An upgrade often fixes problems with the program, but if it is a problem with the data file (*.PST), the upgrade will have little or most likely no effect.

The questions I would now ask you are:

5. How big is the PST file? Nmenaker is correct that 2-3 GB PST files tend to "puke." It has been my experience however, that this "puking" can also begin at a much earlier stage .. even as low as 150 MB. It was part of my job to try to recover PST file data in a Fortune 100 Company for our users. We could usually recover the data, but this recovery was time intensive and was not always 100% successful. Microsoft states that these PST files can safely get up to the 2 GB level. The problem is that this is a theoretical limit. Depending on how you use the file, alignment of the stars, etc, your "actual limit" may be much lower. We never had a PST file that was not 100% recoverable if it was less than 200 MB. PST files use a JET database. If you have ever been in an office with a bunch of database admins, you would have heard their frequent complaints about database corruption, especially if it was a JET database.

6. Where is the PST file located? If it is local to your PC, then you have fewer sources of corruption and can rule out network traffic as the cause as to why deleting things takes forever. If your PST file is saved "on the network" you have corruption and speed issues to deal with just because you have a network in the way. It was my experience that PST files saved on network drives corrupted more frequently.

7. If the PST file is located on the network, you will need to copy it to your local computer before running scanpst.exe on it, since it won't be repaired properly over the network.

8. If you are using an OST file, this too can corrupt. Use scanpst.exe (2002 or higher version) to scan the OST file, by changing the drop down menu. If it is corrupt, just simply create a new one in your profile and delete the old OST file when you are sure it is safe. This can be done since the use of an OST file indicates that the server is keeping copies for you and is syncronizing the data between your PC and the Exchange server.

9. If the OST file is corrupt, you can export the OST data to a new PST file, just to be realllly safe, in case you click a few places you shouldn't ..

10. Which version of Outlook are you using? Corporate/Workgroup? If you are using Corporate/Workgroup, then you will likely have a OST. But if you are accessing a POP3 or IMAP server, you will only have a PST file.

11. If you are using Corporate/Workgroup, do you have the delivery set to the PST file? You can tell this under the "deliver new mail to the following location" tick box.

From the information you have given me thus far, namely the time to delete being excessively long, I am personally leaning to the PST file as being the culprit .. but answer these short questions for me and we will go from there.

Robert