MS Outlook 2010 question

[Russ Smith]

First I hate Microsoft their site is useless it basically says if it doesn't work don't blame us.

So a user at work had a message last night asking her to change her outlook data file password, she doesn't have one so she just hit cancel. Today she can't login to Outlook it keeps asking for an outlook data file password.

When I install Office and setup their Outlook account we have a password for the incoming mail server which I enter into the settings for her email address. That password is the same for all users and the default is for outlook to remember it. So I entered that password into the dialog box and it won't take it.

I googled the problem but everything is about people who actually set passwords and then forgot them, and MS says you're on your own, nothing about it suddenly asking for a password you never set.

Reset didn't work, windows password etc won't take any of them.

the next obvious thing would seem to be uninstall and reinstall outlook, we have the mail setup to remain on the server usually for somewhere between 5 and 10 days so I don't think she'd lose anything but if she did, not much.

Does anybody have any other suggestions beyond just uninstall and reinstall?
My concern is when you can't enter the correct password it says outlook can't connect to the server, contact your administrator, and then closes. So my concern is reinstalling won't solve that?

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Try changing the password?

You still have to enter the old password, but it might give you some more info on the error.

http://www.itechtalk.com/thread9910.html

 

[Russ Smith]

Try changing the password?

You still have to enter the old password, but it might give you some more info on the error.

http://www.itechtalk.com/thread9910.html

We couldn't because we had never set a password in the first place.

Long story short our IT consultant found a free program http://www.nucleustechnologies.com/outlook-password-recovery.html

and it cracked the password for us instantly. The password was 6 digits starting with a # so there's no way someone accidentally set that as a password. She apparently had 6 infections cleaned by our antivirus the night before so we think there was some virus that created this password.

Pretty annoying we didn't find the cracking program until after we'd created a new .pst file for her so then we had to copy over all the old stuff, but we would have had to anyways because she would have otherwise needed to enter the password everytime, clicking save password didn't work, and Outlook would not allow us to remove the password.

So near as anybody can tell it was some weird virus. We got a much more sophisticated scan done and it found nothing further on her machine.

 

[Linderbee]

Tell her to stop surfing porn at work.

 

[Russ Smith]

Tell her to stop surfing porn at work.

The funny thing is we tend to buy used Dell's (refurbished) and when I do the install the last step before giving to the new user is to run a virus scan. The last 4 laptops were already infected by that time. It doesn't guarantee that dell is shipping them to us infected because I have to connect them to the company network to download most of the software, but short of accepting license agreements and doing updates, they're barely "online" and yet already have infections.

So far all spyware no actual viruses.

The AV we use calls everything an infection she said it found 6, but didn't know if they were spyware or viruses because at that point she didn't have the Outlook problem so didn't even think to look closer since it said it had cleaned the infections.

I have found absolutely no reference on such a virus online yet, so if it was a virus, it's a pretty new one and pretty obscure.

 

[Linderbee]

If I were you I'd be running the virus scan at the beginning of your process from now on...or at various stages of your install so that you can try to pinpoint where it's coming from.