outlook 2003 - any .PST file operation crashes outlook (win7-64)

whatever i try to do on my outlook that has to do with .PST file management results in a crash where outlook quits - below the event log on one circumstance.

if i go to control panel > mail settings > data files 2 of the files that are in use (& work) do not show up, one of them the default mail delivery .PST. in these two, trying to access the advanced properties gives an error:

The operation failed. An object could not be found.

now - general googling tells me that recreating the profile could perhaps fix this - but i would love to avoid that as there's no manageable UI to set up the email accounts and there's many in use.

any suggestions? any way of backing up email accounts but not the other things pertaining to the profile?

event log on trying to open a pre-existing .PST that's not in the current profile:

Faulting application name: OUTLOOK.EXE, version: 11.0.8169.0, time stamp: 0x465f28e3
Faulting module name: msmapi32.dll, version: 11.0.8164.0, time stamp: 0x4627afa6
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000ffccf
Faulting process id: 0x30c
Faulting application start time: 0x01ccc51f6b43b93b
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033\msmapi32.dll
Report Id: b49bb612-3112-11e1-949b-00e04c09fab2

JMH said:

Hello zdoe

Click to expand...

* Have you always had this problem on Win 7?
- i believe yes (not 100%). i have annual .PSTs, and thus it's only now that i'm wanting to add one for the forthcoming 2012. removing the old ones HAS worked.

* Have you a System Restore point you can return to PRIOR to the current problem?
- no, i do not. genrally run my machines with system restore disabled. i do have a few registry backups, though - but it's possible that the problem i'm seeing is from right when i switched to 7 from xp.

* Have you tried the Outlook Repair Facility?
- no. where to find it? i did run office 2003 repair-install, though.

* Have you uninstalled /reinstalled?
- no. the mail setup is so complex that i'm very hesitant to do that - also afraid that if i take outlook other office apps will get damaged.

FYI.
A mixed bag of links for you to peruse.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73585-pst-file-corrupted-repair.html

i HAVE run PST repair. the files report errors and getting fixed, but the "fixed" one doesn't change the behaviour.

Outlook PST File Repair - Troubleshooting Microsoft Outlook

Repair Outlook Data Files (.pst and .ost) - Outlook - Office.com

http://www.sevenforums.com/browsers-mail/162328-how-can-i-search-my-ost-file-outlook2003-win7.html

mapi32.dll Error installing Outlook 2003 on win 7, 64bit - Microsoft Answers
am i supposed to NOT use mapi32 on win7-64? is there an alt mapi? where to get it?

cheers.

Unless someone else can come up with some more ideas for you I would suggest you
contact Support for Microsoft Outlook 2003.
See top right hand side
Fix it
or
Get Help Now
Contact a support professional by E-mail, Online, or Phone

The email option I believe is still free.
Have used phone & email myself on occasions.
I found the service to be fast & efficient.

Good luck & Happy New Year.

Support for Microsoft Outlook 2003

now i tried to create a profile from scratch. when accessing a file that i had created before, i get:

"properties for this information service have to be defined prior to use."

if i let it create a new .pst to the new profile, i get:

"...the server is not available."

i'm not using an exchange server, just local .pst's.

interesting add'l bit - perhaps: i succesfully linked the new file to the profile via the win7 built-in admin account that's the only true admin.

so it shows up on my message store -tree. but OL doesn't want to open its folders. AND - the file is not locked for read-writes. the rest of the .pst's i can't rename when outlook is open, this one i can.

so this could be some file-level permissions -issue. but i HAVE given "everyone" full control to all the pst's in the system.

ok - so now i've put my .pst files back to a winXP machine, added the new .pst for 2012 - and reimported the profile (backed up by a free utility called "outlook public profile fix").

obviously not very graceful, but this gives me another year to try to fix whatever is going on with 7-64.

the same backup utility also allowed me to remove an old .pst from the profile, where doing it from outlook would just crash it, the undesired .pst to re-appear on restart.