[gurumarkb]

Hello, ran up against the old dreaded WMS ST NOTIF in Outlook 2003 SP3 today. I googled and found no working solution for me. I uninstalled Quicktime, Apple IPOD, (I have no activesync), turned off all Add-ins, and Outlook 2003 still crashed on exit with ramdom memory errors. I even un-installed Outlook, re-installed it, and then installed Office 2003 SP3 again. Rebooted XP Pro with SP2 and ran Outlook, same crash as before on exit. In frustration I renamed the OUTLOOK.PST file so Outlook would create a new one thinking maybe there was some corruption in it. Nope, same crash. Ok, went back to the original PST file. Now I delved deeper, I went to C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Microsoft and renamed the OUTLOOK folder to OUTLOOK.OLD and ran Outlook. I held my breath as I exited. It shut down with no error. I waited a few seconds to see if the error message would pop up, it did not. I repeatedly ran OUTLOOK another 6 times to see if it was just a fluke, clean shutdown every time. Ok so what's in the old folder that the new one doesn't have. Here's the old and the new:

Old OUTLOOK 2003 folder contents:

Outlook.srs
Outlook.xml
outcmd.dat
outitems.log
Outlook.NK2
OutlPrnt
Stellar Profile 0.srs
Stellar Profile 0.xml

New OUTLOOK 2003 folder contents:
Outlook.srs
Outlook.xml

Ok, I know that the 2 Stellar Profile 0 files are from an add-in so I copied all the other files back to the new Outlook folder, and repeatedly ran and exited Outlook 2003, no WMS ST NOTIF errors. Now for the final test to put the Stellar Profile 0 files back and see if OUTLOOK crashes on exit. What, no crashes!!! Hey, wait a dog gone minute here Microsoft! Ok, so what other config files were changed by Outlook when it didn't have an Outlook folder and had to create a new one with 2 default files in it? I can run Outlook with the original 1.2 GB OUTLOOK.PST file and everything looks normal, I can't see any changes, and Outlook shuts down normally (or as normal as Outlook can be as OUTLOOK.EXE still shows up in the task manager running process list as others have reported) without the WMS ST NOTIF error. Outlook 2003 (probably all other versions too) is a wierd complicated program (probably too complex) and strange bugs can appear without you having done anything wrong.

My final action was to go back and re-enable the Add-in to see if I could trigger the error once more. So far I can't get this error to come back which is very good but this leaves me without an understanding as to what in the world triggered the error in the first place and why did my renaming a folder and forcing Outlook to create a new one fix the problem.
Oh well, another bug to add to the "Mysteries of the Unknown" list.

I'd welcome other persons comments if they can shed any light on the subject. Thank you.