Outlook html msg crashes (XP SP1)

[theCatman01]

I just had my hard drive redone by our Help desk. In the process they upgraded me to Internet Explorer 6.0. The combination of 6.0 and XP causes me to be unable to reply to .html messages without Outlook crashing. (This is just plain Outlook, I'm not using Word as my editor.)

After much research we found a solution (Microsoft has not as yet). Search isn't working at WOPR now so I couldn't see if this had already been reported. I manually checked back 2 months and didn't find anything,

The solution, found in many places via Google! is to downgrade the MSHTML.DLL back to the previous version, specifically version 6.0.2800.1126. Once in place all problems disappear.

One thing that was not apparent from the internet was how to implement this as the .dll in question is always in use if Windows is running.

I understand there are other ways but left to my own devices, I rebooted to a DOS prompt with the following steps:

Shut down and select the Restart option
press F8 key as windows starts to start in Safe Mode
scroll to the "start from a DOS <or Command> prompt" option
Type "CD Windowssystem32", no quotes on any typed info.
Type "rename mshtml.dll mshtml.old"
Type "copy c:mshtml.dll" (Note: I had loaded the correct version of the file onto my C: drive for convenience)
Type "CD Windowssystem32dllcache"
Type "rename mshtml.dll mshtml.old"
Type "copy c:mshtml.dll"

I then hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reboot and everything now works fine.

Hope this helps.

Greg

[OldDog]

Thanks for the tip!

Glad it worked for you so simply. If you do run into any problems with IE or OL down the road you might need to reregister the old DLL file. (Start | Run, regsvr32 "pathToTheDLLFile" )

It's often hard to know if a simple copy of the file is sufficient.

[theCatman01]

OldDog

Thanks for your tip. I reregistered it just to avoid problems down the road.

Greg