[Jarmer]

This problem started out on one of the machines in my office, now it's happening on several of them.

Machine config:
- Outlook 2007
- POP account
- antivirus regularly running/updating/scanning

Symptoms:
- User is running outlook like normal, then all the sudden Outlook gets stuck "Preparing to send / receive". Clicking the Send/Receive button does nothing, and it just sits there forever, apparently never actually making contact with the servers or doing anything at all.

My fix:
- I have to close down Outlook, but that's not enough.
- Open task manager, even though Outlook is closed, there is still an instance of it running on the machine.
- Manually close that extra instance, restart Outlook.

Then all the sudden it works, it sends and receives just fine. I thought the first user may have had a virus, but I've scanned ALL the machines in our office with Symantec Antivirus and nothing came up.

Also, this doesn't appear to ever happen on the two machines in the office who are running IMAP accounts.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

[Jarmer]

nobody has any ideas? Should I include more details, like machine stats or something?

[Jarmer]

Just for future reference, it was Symantec antivirus that was the culprit.

Removed Symantec and it never happened again. Useless garbage software, Symantec is.