Outlook woes on Windows 98 (all versions)

[Tommy]

If you're getting the page-fault caused by OUTLLIB.DLL while running Outlook 2000, for what it's worth my version of that file is 9.0.6627, with a file date of June 28 / 2002 and a size of 5,337,138.

Also - if you can at least start Outlook 2000 and start the system info utility as I described above - or find msinfo32 and run it before you start doing things with outlook, turn on Dr. Watson from msinfo32 tools menu. The Dr. Watson icon should show up in the system tray. See if it creates any log files during the outlook crash.

Hey Nomen, since you said you have Outlook 2000, I'm going to ask you. Do you still actively use it and if so, what email provider do you use? I'm using Gmail and I have Office 2000 upgraded all the way up to service pack 3 and it doesn't seem to want to connect to Gmail, it seems to complain about a server certificate and when you do a send/receive using imap, it seems to just hang. I've double and triple checked my settings and it never seems to work out like it is suppose to.

[Nomen]

> Hey Nomen, since you said you have Outlook 2000, I'm going to ask you.

> Do you still actively use it

Yes. It's the primary mail client on a few of my win-98 systems.

> and if so, what email provider do you use?

Outlook (on my home PC) connects to a few different accounts associated with my ISP (which is operated by Microsoft as a sort of hotmail account) which are just legacy accounts which get very little mail and also connects to the mail server at $dayjob (which is my primary email account). And this is pop3 for both of those - not IMAP.

> I'm using Gmail and I have Office 2000 upgraded all the way up to service pack 3

> and it doesn't seem to want to connect to Gmail, it seems to complain about a

> server certificate and when you do a send/receive using imap, it seems to just

> hang. I've double and triple checked my settings and it never seems to work out

> like it is suppose to.

I could try to see if my outlook 2000 can connect using pop3 to gmail if you'd like me to try. I was just checking and I don't see any options to use IMAP under the outlook server settings.

[Tommy]

That would be awesome if you could try it out. I tried pop3 but it still didn't want to work out. But when I come home permanently I'll try it out again.

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

I'm so glad I could help, Problemchyld! I regularly run your SP3 on my Windows 98 machines so I continue to hunt for problems. At first I really thought it was KernelEx, but now we know the root of the problem. Hopefully it can be fixed where there will be no issue with it at all.

I have fixed the issue in the new version.You don't have to manually fix it anymore. Thanks again.

[Nomen]

This is outlook 2000's log file when connecting to gmail.com for pop-mail login with "Log on using Secure Password Authentication" enabled, port 995, with SSL:

Connecting to 'pop.gmail.com' on port 995.

srv_name = "pop.gmail.com" srv_addr = 173.194.196.109

Negotiating secure connection with 'Microsoft Unified Security Protocol Provider'.

+OK Gpop ready for requests from (...)

AUTH

-ERR malformed command

QUIT

+OK Bye

This is what happens when "Log on using Secure Password Authentication" is disabled:

Connecting to 'pop.gmail.com' on port 995.

srv_name = "pop.gmail.com" srv_addr = 209.85.145.108

Negotiating secure connection with 'Microsoft Unified Security Protocol Provider'.

+OK Gpop ready for requests from (my IP)

USER (someone)@gmail.com

+OK send PASS

PASS ********

-ERR [AUTH] Web login required: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78754

Connection to '' closed.

I then log into gmail using various browsers, using various forged user-agents to see what I can do. This explains the issue:

===============

Someone just tried to sign in to your Google Account (what-ever) from an app that doesn't meet modern security standards.

We strongly recommend that you use a secure app, like Gmail, to access your account. All apps made by Google meet these security standards. Using a less secure app, on the other hand, could leave your account vulnerable. Learn more.

Google stopped this sign-in attempt, but you should review your recently used devices:

REVIEW YOUR DEVICES NOW

Allowing less secure apps to access your account

Google may block sign in attempts from some apps or devices that do not use modern security standards. Since these apps and devices are easier to break into, blocking them helps keep your account safer.

Some examples of apps that do not support the latest security standards include:

The Mail app on your iPhone or iPad with iOS 6 or below

The Mail app on your Windows phone preceding the 8.1 release

Some Desktop mail clients like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird

==============

I don't know (yet) to what extent gmail will allow me to edit or change any settings to allow outlook to have pop3 access to the account. The various browsers I'm using (on win-98) won't allow me full accessibility to the gmail interface. I'm going to have to try it on a PC running a more modern browser. Note also that you need to enable POP access to your account in the first place in order to get this far.

[Tommy]

That's a lot to ingest at the moment, but I will say I definitely have those enabled because I'm using Outlook 2003 on my Windows 2000 machine to access Gmail via pop and it works just fine. But I want IMAP on Windows 98 simply because I don't want the PST file going over its limits so pop isn't a good option for me there.

[Drugwash]

Completely unrelated to Outlook but then again I never used it and never will: have you tried POP Peeper as an e-mail application? Used to work with the help of KernelEx, at least the last 4.0 beta did - dunno about 4.1, I only tested it in XP. Got one AOL account and three Yahoo! accounts. GMail used to work too but I'm keeping that one out for some reason.

However it is a memory hog, using SQLite3 databases for each account. Actively maintained. No need to buy the Pro version unless you need private/Spam folders checked. SSL libraries available on their site.

Dunno, may be worth a try if Outlook won't budge. Just sayin'.

[Nomen]

Ok, so here's what I did. In Outlook 2000, in order for me to see IMAP server options when creating new accounts, I need to do something that was called (I think) - "Reconfigure Outlook". I believe my outlook was operating in some sort of corporate workgroup mode, and this reconfiguration took me out of that mode. In order to complete the process, outlook was asking for "data1.msi" that is found on the Office 2000 Premium SR1 CD - which I had to look for.

After that, I create a new outlook account, where it can access the test gmail account using IMAP. I then used some newer version of Firefox running on an XP machine to log into the gmail account and enable IMAP access and then I enabled access for the so-called "less secure" device (which it did not identify but was Outlook 2k running on win-98).

After that, I report that I can indeed access the test gmail account using both pop and imap under Outlook 2000 running under win-98se. The only issue is that upon starting outlook and performing the first mail retrieval from all the various accounts, I get this message:

---------------

The server you are connected to is using a security certificate that could not be verified.

0x80096004

Do you want to continue using this server? (yes)(no)

-----------------

I say yes and I don't believe I get that error again while outlook is running. I don't know if the error is associated with the pop access to the gmail account, or the imap, or both.

If there's a way to fix this certificate issue, or even some way to tell outlook to automatically ignore it (maybe a registry entry?) let me know.

[Tommy]

That's the certificate error I got too. But I'll give what you said a try.

 

I'll check out POP Peeper. I mean Outlook is my preference, I don't like Thunderbird, but it doesn't mean I'm not open to new software. So once I get some time, I'll check it out.

[Nomen]

So just a bit of an update. I appear to be getting the irritating "0x80096004" message/error for both the Gmail IMAP and POP logon's each time that outlook performs a mail-check (not just the first time, but every time). Answering Yes or No to the question "Do you want to continue using this server?" seems to do nothing in terms of how it handles the next IMAP or POP login into Gmail. Searching around, I found that this registry setting:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Outlook\Security

Dword value SupressNameChecks = 1

In my case, the Security key did not exist - so I created it and then added the SupressNameChecks dword value and set it to 1. I also created the dword value Options and set it to 1. I also found references to a string value "RequiredCA" but don't know how to use it (or if it can be used) to prevent the offending security certificate issue.

Also, for those running Office 2000 / Outlook 2000, you might get confused by the existance of this registry key path / tree:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\

I have that key path, but I don't know why. Outlook 2000 (Office 2000) and below seems to store it's reg values in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, but newer versions of outlook / office seem to use HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

I still get the 0x80096004 message when Outlook performs the first mail-check on the Gmail IMAP and POP accounts, but adding SupressNameChecks = 1 to the registry seems to stop all subsequent message pop-ups while outlook is running, and the gmail accounts are indeed checked for new mail. It would be useful to know what the "Options" string registry value does, and also if there are other values in the outlook Security key that could further improve this situation.

Also, I came across (and installed) a .CER file that didn't help - but I'm wondering if there might a .CER file out there somewhere (or if one can be constructed) that would satisfy Win-98/Outlook 2000 in the case of Gmail servers (imap.gmail.com and pop.gmail.com).

I also noticed that many XP users had trouble in the past with the 0x80096004 error while using iTunes. Many questions were posted in several different blogs / forums - and the only answer seemed to be to upgrade from SP2 to SP3. Which raises the question - what is known about the security certificate handling of XP-SP2 that could only be fixed by upgrading to SP3? Knowing the answer to that question might tell us if the 0x80096004 certificate error can ever be fixed for win-98.

[Tommy]

Success!

 

I finally have Outlook 2002 working just fine on Windows 98 and Gmail/IMAP. I ended up having to do a repair install on Office which completely reset my settings and deleted my old PST and account information. I did have one update headers failure during the middle of a download, but then it seemed like closing and reopening Outlook finally made it finish so now all my email is there as it should be and I'm able to send and receive just fine. I just sent an email and another one came in just fine on its own. So now I believe the problem is pretty much solved. It does what I need it to do on what I want to use for the most part, so I'm good!

Edited August 10, 2015 by Tommy

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

---------------

The server you are connected to is using a security certificate that could not be verified.

0x80096004

Do you want to continue using this server? (yes)(no)

-----------------

The fix is here http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/174247-windows-9x-ssl-protocol-winsslwrap-117/#entry1105356

[Tommy]

It seems that there's another little issue going on, whether it's actually related to Outlook or not, but I've noticed that at times Outlook 2002 will hang when it's trying to retrieve mail and in conjunction with RP9, if I do a CTRL+ALT+DEL, it'll say that there's only 1% or sometimes 0% resources left and even the desktop will be black saying the machine is dangerously low on resources. If I kill Outlook....it returns to normal. Then if I open it up again, all seems fine.

[Tommy]

Alrighty, since nobody answered my question or seems to know what's going on, I have a picture. Outlook is definitely the cause of this....but why? As soon as I kill the program, everything returns to normal, without even having to reboot.

[jumper]

There's not much to say except the obvious: Outlook is leaking User resources and needs to be restarted more often.

I'll add resource monitoring to a future version of the KernelEx debugger.