Outlook won't open unless user is local admin

[murph]

We've been updating to SP2 at work and in the process, removing everyone as local admin (wasn't my doing). The users have been added as "restricted user" and most of them are fine, but there are about 3 that can't open Outlook after I do this.

Any suggestions or similar experiences ?

TIA

 

[AristonCC]

You may want to check the location of the PST file. We have about 100 users at one of two locations where I provide consulting services and all are either Office XP or Office 2003 and most have Restricted User rights. The PST file would normally be located here:

Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst

If for some reason during the SP2 upgrade some permissions went sideways, the user may have lost access to this file. One option would be to login as an Admin, backup the user's Profile (just copy everything in the Username folder except for the NTUSER.DAT file) and then recreate the Profile on the workstation. Windows will reassociate the permissions to those folders.

Outlook will definitely run if the user has Restricted User rights on the local machine so something went nuts with the upgrade to SP2.

Good luck!

 

[murph]

You may want to check the location of the PST file. We have about 100 users at one of two locations where I provide consulting services and all are either Office XP or Office 2003 and most have Restricted User rights. The PST file would normally be located here:

Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst

If for some reason during the SP2 upgrade some permissions went sideways, the user may have lost access to this file. One option would be to login as an Admin, backup the user's Profile (just copy everything in the Username folder except for the NTUSER.DAT file) and then recreate the Profile on the workstation. Windows will reassociate the permissions to those folders.

Outlook will definitely run if the user has Restricted User rights on the local machine so something went nuts with the upgrade to SP2.

Good luck!

Thank you for the reply. However, there isn't a .pst file located in that location or anywhere for that matter. I realize they "should" be there, but I'm lost at the moment.
These are XP boxen on a 2K domain. Like I said, most have had no issues, but there are about 3 that have. Any other suggestions ?

 

[feigned]

The real Outlook or Outlook Express? There is a difference.

Are you in a domain with an Exchange server? If you are everything should be stored in the Exchange databases, not in .pst's.

If this is the case, and those three users are not storing their mailboxes locally (do a search for *.pst on the machine) then I'd blast the Outlook profiles and recreate them.

Check the event logs too, see if you can glean any information from them.