Outlook 2003 Crashes post-March 2010 Patch Tuesday

Just a quick note for anyone with this issue – 5 of my clients were affected, the only things common among them were Exchange and Outlook 2003, and XP Pro.

Outlook would not start – alternating between memory errors and a debug screen pointing to perf.dll as a culprit.

System Restore would fix the issue – for 24 hours.

So I called Microsoft support this morning, and got a call back almost 4 hours later. An hour and 10 minutes later, we found a solution, but no reason for the problem:

Delete the HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\Outlook key, and voila. All fixed.

Definitely a bug in the March update. Microsoft is still to identify it as a broader issue, but with 5 clients at 4 locations all with the identical problem, I don’t need any more proof. Just glad it’s fixed.

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3 Responses to “Outlook 2003 Crashes post-March 2010 Patch Tuesday”


  1. 1 GD March 22, 2010 at 12:24 pm

    have the same problem, outlook 2003 crashes constantly at start uo. Followed the instructions to delete hklm\system\controlset001\services\outlook ….. did not fix the problem, outlook still crashes at start up

    • 2 onadotcom June 11, 2010 at 4:58 pm

      Check out CurrentControlSet\Servives or Controlset001\Services or Controlset002\services and delete the Outlook folder


  1. 1 Outlook Crashes – Final Word « Ramblings on IT Trackback on April 18, 2010 at 4:19 pm

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