Somehow my address book has been locked by another program and I can't figure out what program that is. It is wreaking havoc on my OE because it won't let me respond to newsgroups, send email, or even open the address book. When I try to open the address book in OE an error message pops up saying "The Address Book failed to load. Outlook Express is incorrectly configured, please re-install". The only problem with that is that it won't let me re-install it! I have tried to delete and uninstall IE6 and OE6 both. I have went into the registry and changed both reg values to "0" and then reinstall over them and that didn't work. Can anyone give me an idea of what might work? I have went to the Microsoft website for help and none of that worked either. I'm running out of options.

Hi,
Could you tell what is your OS.

Hi,
Try this to reinstall.
Go to Start/Find or might be Search.
Then, type in ie6setup.exe, and click on Find or Search.
When it finds the file, then left double click on it, and it should start the installation Wizard for reinstalling IE6 and Outlook Express6.
When a pop-up says "IE is already installed, are you sure you want to reinstall it?". Click on Yes, and it will do the uninstallations, then reinstall.
If that doesn't work, here is a link for XP, if you have XP, with the different versions to do a reinstall:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=318378
Best of luck.

I'm sorry, I thought I told my OS!! It is XP. And fredg, I have tried both of those methods and got nowhere. When I try to reinstall it, it just says that it found a newer version, installation cannot complete. If any other suggestions, I would be thankful.

Hi, dg,
If you are using SP1, then scroll down almost to the bottom of the site. It gives steps to Edit the Registry.; so the "found newer version..." will not stop the installation.
Hope this works!
If you are using SP2, then look for the Registry values anyway, see if they are the same. If so, then follow the steps to change them to 0.

LOL, sorry fred, I should've told you I done that already also. It's going to have to be something pretty extraordinary before I will be able to say I haven't done it. I've even used live tech support, downloaded IE7 beta 2, etc. etc...

I do appreciate your help though, just that I've tried a lot already and nothing has worked.

Hi, again,
Do you have a System Restore point(s) setup with your XP?
Just a thought. Might try Restoring it to a previous date when you know it worked OK.

Yes, I do, but for some reason it won't let me restore to any of my restore points. Can't figure that one out either.

Hi,
The only other suggestion I have is to repair XP.
There is a reason why your System Restore isn't working, and maybe a repair will get it going.
If you would like to try it, here is a link with some steps on how to do it:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ps/doug92.mspx

Best of luck.

When I follow that link from FREDG I get how to reinstall Windows XP, not just the restore function. I had a problem with system restore. My compuetr would act like it was restoring and after it rebooted it would say it couldn't restore to requested access point, no matter the point I used. What I did was right click computer > Properties > System Restore. Check "Turn Off System restore" > Apply > Reboot. After reboot, uncheck "Turn Off System Restore" > Apply > Reboot. That fixed it. Now keep in mind that this will CLEAR ALL PREVIOUS RESTORE POINTS. So this won't fix your Outlook problem, but should fix the restore problem. If that doesn't fix the restore problem try here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=302796. May even look here first.

Just had this same problem, tried the re-installing of IE6 by changing reg values to 0 etc etc. and all didn't work... But just did a system restore to my previous day's settings and addy book working fine now! :D

Thanks, hope this helps others!

Matt