Improving the Prognosis When Outlook Freezes on Startup

Starting With a Bleak Outlook A DOS device name bug that exploited a stability hole in Windows 9.x. By carefully crafting an HTML e-mail message, an attacker could create the dreaded blue screen of death (BSOD) when the message was read. Under certain conditions, if that gaffed e-mail were the first message in the Inbox, the BSOD would occur before Outlook had completely loaded, preventing the user from accessing any other messages in their Inbox. While this specific DOS device name bug was patched soon after, the problem with Outlook processing messages before the user selects them still remains. (more...)