Outlook 2003/Office Problems, registry problems? after the installation of Video Card

[DualMonitors]

I just bought and installed a new video card for 2 dvi outputs. Installed drivers, etc. It is a Matrox P650 in order to use 2 LCD's both dvi connected.

Immediately after that, for the last several hours, my Outlook 2003 has been acting up. Basically two problems that I can see so far:

(1) when you’re looking at an appointment and made a change (or even when you have not made a change) and click the “save and close” button on the upper left corner, nothing happens. Even the file/save won’t work. Only the red x at the top right hand corner works when you click it, it asks if you want to save before closing.

(2) When I open up outlook now, it, as usual, opens up to the email screen. But the entire top row of buttons are gone: new, print, reply, reply to all…etc. only if I click the center (maximize and not maximize) button, will the row of function buttons reappear.

I’m worried that if I have to do a system restore in order to correct this, I better do it sooner rather than later.

Could the new card’s drivers have corrupted Outlook? Could the removal of the old card’s drivers corrupted something?

I did use a driver cleaner to “clean out” the old driver’s stuff.

Ugh.

The other thing is I don’t know if re-installing outlook/Office might work. If a registry has been corrupted, won’t I have to restore to previous condition?

Thanks.

[Zxian]

Hey there,

I have no idea about Matrox drivers (nice card btw...), but you should be able to repair your installation of Office/Outlook without too much trouble. Check the Matrox website and the Microsoft website to see if anyone has posted any information about the drivers and Office causing incompatibility problems. If there are any fixes, try them out first.

If you want to try to repair your Outlook, go to Control Panel-> Add/Remove Programs and select Office/Outlook (depending on if your got the full Office or just Outlook). Click on the Change/Remove button. A window should pop up with a selection to repair or to remove the program. Select repair. If you deleted the installation files when you first installed Outlook, you'll need your original CD for this.

I've had some wierd problems with Office when I've done my annual clean install. If I install Office before I install my video drivers (ATI Radeon 9200 Mobility), then I get some wierd stuff similar to what you've explained, but if I install the drivers before installing Office, then all goes well. My guess is that some GUI based programs (pretty much anything you buy today) install their graphics controls based on your current video setup.

If that doesn't, back up all your important Office files and do a clean install of Office. If that still doesn't work, your best bet is to do a clean install of Windows. However, I'm guessing that since you're dealing with a Martox video card and two DVI connected LCDs, then you're probably doing something graphics related, and you've already got all your software installed, and reinstalling everything would be a pain in the ass.

Hope this helps.