Sunday, January 13, 2008
Outlook High CPU Usage - Solved

I was having some performance issues with Outlook 2007.  When running idle, it was consuming around 20-30% CPU.  I know that Outlook is no small app but 20-30% CPU when idle, c'mon!

Trying to figure out what was wrong, I made sure I downloaded all the performance patches and I applied Office SP1 but still experienced a high CPU usage.

One day, I had the idea to disable all the non essential add-ins.  Looks like with every software application comes with an Outlook add-in.  Why do I need a SnagIt add-ins in Outlook?  Why do I need a MindManager add-in?  Nuisance if you ask me.

Guess what?  After disabling these add-ins, Outlook CPU usage dropped to 0% with peaks at 2-4%!!!

So how do you disable Outlook add-ins?  In the Tools menu, select Trust Center.

Click on the Add-ins tab on the left of the screen and in the lower portion, select Com Add-ins from the drop down and click Go.

You can then uncheck non essential add-ins.

Sunday, January 13, 2008 11:24:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [2]  | 
Thursday, January 24, 2008 7:54:26 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
One slight problem - on Vista, you can't disable any add-ins which are installed under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE from Outlook. You'll get a very clear error message telling you that you can't do it, but no advice on how to do it.

To disable one of these add-ins, you need to:
1. Close Outlook;
2. Launch "regedit.exe";
3. Navigate to "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\[Add-in Name]";
4. Change the "LoadBehavior" value to "2".
5. Re-start Outlook;
Richard
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 3:18:51 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
thanks to you guys for the tips - worked beautifully - weirdly enough, Outlook was writing a contact and a calendar folder, empty mind you, to whatever directory in which I had last saved an Office document, and would keep writing it once I deleted them until I saved a document to a different folder, at which point it began the same process there - have you ever heard of that phenomenon? I expect this may have been what the CPU suckage was about - thanks again
Martin | mcgelbAT NOSPAMhotmail dot com
All comments require the approval of the site owner before being displayed.
Name
E-mail
Home page

Comment (HTML not allowed)  

Enter the code shown (prevents robots):
Live Comment Preview

Theme design by Jelle Druyts