[~Candy~]

I've had this happen twice and can't seem to find any info on it, and have fixed it twice with the same method, so I thought I would post this as a tip/trick so I won't have to rack my brain the next time I see it.

Both times, this has been on a system where Windows 98 and XP Pro were in a dual boot situation and Outlook Express and IE have been updated.

Email messages will contain the red X box. If you go to tools, options, security tab, the box to check/uncheck "Download Images" (block images and other external content) is missing. If you go to OE, help/about, be sure that msoe.dll and msoeres.dll are in the same directory with the rest of the files listed there. Both times, those two files were pointing to a different directory from the current location of Windows.

I hope this helps someone.

[WhitPhil]

Out of curiousity, where were they pointing?

You said "from the current version of Windows". Did you mean of "Outlook Express"?

I'm on XP and both of those files reside in "\Program Files\Outlook Express".

[~Candy~]

Hi Phil,

They were pointing to the Windows 98 installation, which in this particular instance was on the c: drive, and the XP Pro installation is on the e: drive.

So, yes, as you said, under program files\outlook express, these files existed on both drives (partitions). I renamed the files on c: drive to .old and closed Outlook Express and upon re-opening Outlook Express, those two files were now pointing to the correct Windows installation.

As I said, this is the second time that I've seen this happen. The first time, I worked with EAFiedler for a good couple of weeks, and just happened to notice that when I was checking the version of OE.


I hope that makes sense.

[WhitPhil]

But, the files that OE has in use (when it is running correctly) are in \Windows as opposed to the \Program Files\Outlook Express folder??

Tis very weird.

On my XP system, the files do NOT exist under \Windows, and on my (old) Win98 disk, they don't either.
So in your case, somewhere along the line, they would appear to have been installed somewhere that they should not have been?

[~Candy~]

Perhaps I'm still not being clear.

On both drives, there is a program files\outlook express folder.

When using XP Pro, for whatever reason, Outlook Express (Help/About) showed that it was using those two files from the c: program files\outlook express folder, and the rest of the files from e: program files\outlook express. In both cases, NOT to the Windows directory.

[WhitPhil]

Ah, now clear as mud!!! (it was the term "Windows installation" that was leading the mind astray, leading the mind astray, leading the mind astray,...)

Two \Outlook Express\ folders, one for each system.
But OE, on one system was actually using files on the other system.

[~Candy~]

Correct. I still don't understand why. The first time I ran into it, I thought it was just a fluke of some sort, but the second time, on another system.....something strange is going on

Sorry for the confusion