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Is the virtualised XP Pro SP3 a 32 bit version? I have a Win 7 Professional x64 and would like to run XP mode. Will that XP, in the 64 bit system, be a 32 bit version and will it still run 16 bit applications. Yes, I have one from about 1993 which still runs OK, without any compatibility modes, on any modern 32 bit OS and I have not yet found a decent replacement. It did not even need updating for Y2K and it is a calendar application. It worked OK.

It appears it is all about IE9. I copied a url from an IE9 page today with intent to paste it into Word 2010 and IE9 kept pulling me back. So far I have been pulled back from Outlook 2010, Word 2010 and a second instance of IE9 because I copied a url and went to another application with intent to paste it.

When I find a page that I can use to demonstrate a reproduceable bug then I will try it without addons. I only have two addons enabled: Adobe Shockwave Flash Object and Office Document Cache Handler. Not sure what this will prove as it didn’t happen with IE8 and now it happens with IE9. Those two addons were the only ones ever enabled under IE8. Life without either would be intolerable. I’ll try it and get back.

The plot thickens, I just had two separate instances of IE9 running (separate windows not tabs) and wanted to copy a URL from one to the other. I did the copy and went to the other window and was pulled back to the original window. The only fix was to shut the offending window. NO EMAIL involvement here.

Jerry
I will try it and report back.

Ted, definitely not the problem. I don’t like that particular setting being on. It drives me crazy. I also checked just now and it’s not on.
thanks

I don’t need to do anything to replicate the problem except move focus from IE9 to Outlook. I have to be very quick to even attempt to do any work. Yes, Outlook is confused about the focus. The problem only happens occasionally. I don’t know about the relationship to Flash Player yet but it is likely. I’ll do some more checking.

I have a work around to stop IE9 stealing focus but I am unable to express it yet as it happens when I am so irritated that I don’t remember it exactly. It involves clicking back on the IE9 taskbar icon. If I don’t do that it will steal focus for as many times as I wish to open the Outlook window. My video HW is an Intel i7-2600 with an ASUS H67 board. All Win 7 and Office updates are applied. Not quite there with the Intel updates.

Win 7 Pro SP1 32 bit
Acronis TIH 2011
Adobe Reader X (now uninstalled)
Adobe Flash Player 10.3 Active X
Nitro PDF Reader (installed after IE9 problem)
Ashampoo Burning Studio
Avira AntiVir Premium
Google Earth
Intel Control Center
Intel HD graphics driver
Logitech SetPoint
Microsoft Office Professional 2010
Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2007
Picasa 3
Primo PDF
Silverlight 4
Win 7 Codecs

I liked your story on fixing the problem without reinstalling Windows. I also have another weapon available. I backup my Win 7 boot drive daily with Acronis True Image Home 2011. It has saved me a couple of times when nothing else could.

I note you suggest MSCONFIG to clean up programs that automatically start. It’s OK but it doesn’t fix all autostarts. I installed ASUS AI Suite II on my machine for a specific purpose and I noticed it kept starting and sitting in the System Tray. It wasn’t in MSCONFIG. After a bit of thinking I ran Sysinternal’s Autoruns from the website and it picked up that AI Suite was being started by the Task Manager. I unticked it and that fixed that. While I was there I cleaned up several other annoyances or unuseful pieces of software.

Or you could try upgrading to 7 Professional and using XP Mode, (A VM) and using the existing drivers in the legal full copy of XP that comes along with the Wnidows Virtual Machine. Good luck!!

A reasonable suggestion. I do have Win 7 Professional and I have been unable to get the printer running in the XP Mode VM. I cant see this as a solution even if the printer did run. I still want to print to this printer from other machines which will be running Win 7 64bit and I dont have a 64bit driver for them. The printer runns OK using Vista drivers in Win 7 32 bit. I was prepared to buy another low powered 32 bit machine to run the printer on but I believe (and so do others) that I could not print to it from a 64 bit Win 7 without 64 bit drivers on the 64 bit machines. I was hoping to be proved wrong on that point when I started this thread.

Probably what I will do eventually is get a Brother HL-2140 (very cheap in Australia) and run that on the low powered 32bit machine which will also act as a scanner server, music server and a platform to run a couple of very old but still useful programs. I could run XP pro 32 bit, Vista Home Premium 32 bit or Win 7 Professional 32 bit (all of them are retail versions) as I have unutilised licences for these. The Brother printer has drivers for Xp, Vista, 7 both 32 and 64 bit.

Chuck, I missed the button first time. Got it now but no MS drivers for 32bit. Not much chance for 64bit. I think I may have to buy a new printer eventually. Sad, because it is still working well. Thanks for the assist.

Chuck, thanks for the reply.

I had some difficulty finding the way with your suggestion. I right clicked the printer in the Devices and Printers section but could not find an Advanced tab or any ability to change the driver there even though I tried Properties, Printer Properties and subsections of both. I went to Device Manager and could not find my printer in there even when it was switched on. It did show up after selecting Show Hidden Devices. That showed a Printers section and then my printer. Right clicking that showed a selection to Update Driver Software and I was told it was up to date. Could you provide more detail on your method please.

Also are you suggesting that if it finds a 32 bit “native” driver then it will also have a 64 bit “native” driver? I don’t currently have a 64 bit machine. The question is asked as part of planning to go that way.

Try running Windows Explorer as administrator and making the changes. Go to the Start Orb. Type “explorer” (without the quotation marks), right click “Windows Explorer”, select “Run As Administrator”.

Joe

Joe, that was a good idea and but it didn’t help. Thanks for the reply.

I turned on Active X filtering in IE9 and when I went to look at my Gmail box I was told that Gmail needs Active X filtering turned off. Not quite those words but you get the idea. So much for that security feature.

Roy
The reason, that I found, for OE email corruption was like this. You are on email and you are finished the session so you close OE and you are finished on the machine. So you initiate a shutdown but simultaneously OE does a database compaction. The shutdown proceeds and the compaction fails. Next time you start OE you have lost emails because the OE database files are corrupted. There are probably other scenarios but that was the one that happened to me more than once. There used to be a whole industry out there selling OE mail recovery programs at about $30.

I think (but do not know) that the Recovered folders are WLM finding some or all of the previously unrecoverable emails. It may be able to recover the database files that OE could not do for itself. When the OE corruption happens OE ignores the corrupted folder files and creates new ones which are usually empty. There is one file for each OE email folder and they are named after the OE email folders plus there is also an index file. The folder files have a dbx file extension. If you can find the OE DBX files (OE will tell you where they are) it is quite obvious which ones are corrupted. I can’t remember much detail as I left XP as soon as Vista XP1 came out.

I can’t answer your last question because I have no experience with WLM (I use Outlook) and I can’t quite understand the question. It sounds like you want to delete all of your WLM emails by deleting the message store?

Sorry I can’t be more helpful but I thought the means of corruption may be of interest.

This problem is now fixed. When I started Outlook a couple of days back I was told I had to update Outlook Hotmail Connector. I did and the problem reported in this thread went away. It seems that MS did not allow for something when they wrote the previous release.