When starting Outlook "loading profile" hangs indefinitely

Anonymous

Outlook will not start in safe mode either. Tried repairing office. Can't even delete a profile as that hangs as well.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Press WinKey+R. In the Open field, type regedit and hit Enter

Delete the following key to delete profile, once deleted re-create the profile.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\Windows

Messaging Subsystem\ Profiles

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Try

Press WinKey+R. In the Open field, type

outlook.exe /resetnavpane

Be sure to include the space. Press Enter.

If this answer solves your problem, please check, Mark as Answered. If this answer helps, please click the Vote as Helpful button. Cheers Shane Devenshire

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Outlook will not start in safe mode either. Tried repairing office. Can't even delete a profile as that hangs as well.

I've seen this problem several times and it's not tough to fix.

Rather than deleting a profile or taking any other destructive approach, I've found that you can simply create a new one with no risk.

Step One: Make sure Outlook is not running:

CTRL-ALT-DEL to open the Task Manager.
Choose the "Processes" tab to show all running processes.
Right Click on Outlook.exe (if it is running) and select "End Process Tree".

Step Two: Back up your profile:

Go to Control Panel/Mail and choose "Show Profiles..." to open the profiles dialog.
Rename your broken profile to "old profile"
Select "Prompt for a profile to be used".

Step Three: Start Outlook - problem solved:

Now start Outlook normally.
When it asks which profile to use, click on the "New..." button.

Outlook will now simply create a completely new profile which will, hopefully, solve all of your problems.

Once you have finished this troubleshooting/repair, tell Outlook to always use your new profile (See Step Two for instructions).

0 comments

87 additional answers

Anonymous

2012-01-25T17:03:01+00:00

I too had this issue, and it had nothing to do with recreating profiles or going into the registry.

I’ve had this happen to me all too often, had 3 different solution options that I was trying, and found one that works every time (so far). The issue for me is with Shortel Call Manager and the “Agent.exe” process.

For those who use the Shortel contact or voicemail integration, it can sometimes break Outlook if you close it. When you try to re-open Outlook, it can hang on loading profiles until you reboot or kill off the "agent.exe" process. Of course uninstalling voicemail integration solves this problem, but most of us like that feature (listening to voicemail from an email message).

In short, kill the Agent.exe process if you get stuck. If you want to try a more permanent solution you could try modifying the Agent.exe process to run in XP compatibility mode, but no guarantee.

There are other programs that use Agent.exe (Macromedia, Roxio, etc.) and this solution may work for that scenario as well.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2011-12-31T07:20:32+00:00

Broke my outlook with error message:

Microsoft Outlook

Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The server is not available. Contact your administrator if this condition persists.

OK
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments