Outlook 2003, HTML Rendering and Anti-Spyware Products

Sometimes ago, I started experiencing a crippling problem with email rendering (and particularly HTML email) in Outlook 2003. Before you cry fool, my regular MUA is Apple's Mail.app. But I do use Outlook 2003 for some customer-related mailboxes I have aside from my normal mailbox.

I have all the latest and greatest (hum...) patches installed and I really wondered what caused such a slowdown. Whenever I click on a message in the panel or start replying to an HTML mail, it takes a lot of time. Entering the right keywords in Google and "strolling" past the stupidity of some of the advices (uninstall security patch bla, modify this registry key and pray for a better world...) brought me the answer:

Sandi - Microsoft MVP
Please don't uninstall the security update. Try this instead.

This problem is often caused by a "protective" protocol that I do not
support or recommend, that is, loading down the registry by adding a slew of
sites to IE's Restricted Sites zone - sometimes tens of thousands of URLs.
Products that "protect" you by loading down the registry in such a way
include Spybot, IE-Spyad and Spyware Blaster.

IE7 has made changes to the way that the rendering engine interacts with the
Restricted Sites zone - the end result is that if you are using Outlook (not
2007), have IE7 installed and use HTML as your email format, then when you
type an email the IE rendering engine will check the registry for entries in
IE's Restricted Sites zone **every time you type a character***.

FIXES:

Remove all of those entries in the Restricted Sites Zone - a quick way to do
this is to reset Internet Explorer's settings (Tools, Internet Options,
Advanced tab)

I do use Spybot S&D and Spyware Blaster and I found many URLs in the Restricted Sites Zone. Since I rarely use IE as a browser, I removed the entries as advised. And Outlook started working normally again. Quick and clean. Thanks Sandi!

I also deactivated the Spybot BHO so that next time, it won't block URLs and cripple Outlook again.