Thank you for your response to my previous E-Mail about problems with Outlook 2000. Unfortunately soon after I sent the message Outlook just stopped running. Even though the Inbox Scanner from Microsoft pronounced the Inbox healthy. Now when I try to open Outlook all that happens is the dialogue box identifying the program and an hourglass cursor. Ctrl-Alt-Del lists Outlook 2000 as running, although on occasions, has showed it as not responding. Clicking ‘End Task’ will eventually bring up the dialogue box to say that the program is not responding. I have resorted to Outlook Express to remain connected to email. As Outlook will not open I cannot do any more diagnostics. There is also a problem with running ScanDisk. It stops working after 10 restarts because some application is accessing the disk. I have removed most applications from startup but it still happens. I am close to doing a complete restore and format to see if that cures the problems. Is there anything else I can do before taking this measure?

You can always try to just reinstall Office 2000 before thinking about reinstalling Windows. I have seen other applications which have crashed on startup fixed by reinstalling the problem application. Although this is at best a long shot, it is worth a go. Realistically, ScanDisk would be unlikely to fix the problem which is most probably due to Outlook itself as opposed to a problem with the file structure or hard drive. But if you would still like to try running ScanDisk, boot into Windows safe mode and try running it from there. When you boot into Windows Safe Mode, this only loads drivers and services essential to the functioning of Windows (which is why your display will be 640 x 480 and 16 colours) so no unnecessary applications which could be causing ScanDisk to stop would be loaded. You can boot into Safe Mode by pressing the F8 key when the ‘Windows 9x Starting…’ message appears during bootup or alternatively press F8 just before the Windows splash screen appears. A menu will then appear where you should select and enter ‘Safe Mode’. To return to normal Windows mode, simply reboot your computer. Apart from trying the two above mentioned procedures there is not much else you can try. Most of the time problems like this could be caused by any number of factors. If you are encountering programs crashing for no apparent rhyme or reason, it is probably best to cut your losses and reinstall Windows.