Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - When Bad Ideas become mainstream FAQ Entries

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When Bad Ideas become mainstream FAQ Entries

Posted 2005-07-07 01:37 PM in Musings | Tools.

OMG. So, there's a known issue with Outlook 2003 and systems with more than one Gig of RAM. Apparently they are working on a fix. When using the MSN Desktop Search to index your outlook offline folder (OST) on a machine with more than a gig of RAM you may get the error "The .OST file is in accessible."

What's the recommended fix you ask? here's the direct quote from the MSN Toolbar FAQ.

To avoid this problem, you can remove memory so that your computer has 1GB of less of RAM, or you can disable memory above 1GB.

To disable memory:

On the Start menu, click Run and then type cmd to open a command prompt window.
Type cd c:\ to switch to your C drive.
Type bootcfg /addsw /mm 1024 /ID 1.
Restart your computer.

I am a little reticent to recommend that my Mom go running bootcfg and neutering her machine by disabling her second GIG of RAM.

Just for the record and to quote Egon, "I think that would be an extraordinarily Bad Idea." I'm surprised this kind of fairly low level and rather brute force suggestion made it into a the product FAQ for the MSN Toolbar/Search.

Tracked by:
"Oulook Problem? No Problem!!! Just use Bootcfg to Limit your RAM - LOL!!!" (The... [Trackback]

Thursday, July 07, 2005 1:40:34 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Wow, that's horrible. Maybe they can tell us to repartition the hard drive to than 4 GB and load as many TSRs as possible into high-memory, too.

How exactly does one write an application that barfs with more than 1GB anyway?

Kevin Dente

Thursday, July 07, 2005 4:41:07 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

That's ghetto!

blameMike

Thursday, July 07, 2005 4:45:20 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

There is a hotfix available: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=900628

Jonathan Hardwick

Thursday, July 07, 2005 7:33:15 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Unfortunately, I'm not surprised. I'm told that my index file is corrupt and I must download and install the "latest version" at least once/wk. This requires at least one reboot -- that isn't optional. I used to be shocked when I'd come across things like this that would prevent a Microsoft app from being Windows XP Certified. No more.

Jeff Key

Thursday, July 07, 2005 11:19:17 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Oh, but at least you get it to work. I've reinstalled the latest version 4-5 times. It indexes and everything looks great. THen I try to search, and ... nothing happens. Searching for things I *know* is there... nothing.

Kaisa M. Lindahl

Thursday, July 07, 2005 11:43:45 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hmm... that is a very bad solution... like if I hang reboot the machine...

For the sake of using an application, you need to sacrifice your valueble RAM?

Chandu

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 7:43:00 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Right, that's bad...OK...important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

BTW, I personally use X1 (www.x1.com) Never had a problem with it.