The Address Book Failed to Load. Outlook Express…
…is incorrectly configured, please re-install.
If you are reading this article right now because you were searching for this through Google I am sure you are not too happy. I don’t blame you. Let me guess, Outlook Express is on the fritz, it won’t open (or it will but all you get is the mentioned error) you can’t get your email, and you are being told to reinstall the program but you were never given a disk to do this. Sound about right?
It will be okay. I have been there too. This issue was one of the main experiences that made me decide to switch over to Linux but I want to share my story to help others that are running into this problem.
I am going to outline what caused the problem. Things I tried that didn’t fix the problem, and the way I finally resolved the issue.
CAUSE:
A corrupted or damaged Address Book in Windows.
When I came across this it was because the Address Book in Windows became corrupt after I deleted all the contacts from it at once. I was working on a clients PC and she had upgraded from Windows 2000, to XP.
When we backed up her address book and exported the CSV file some of the information did not get copied to the correct columns. To fix this I manually edited the CSV file in Excel to put the data into the proper fields. Once this had been done I deleted all the contacts so I could re-import the corrected list.
Unfortunately Outlook Express (or Windows) does not like when you delete all the contacts. This can sometimes lead to a corrupt address book, which will lead to the above error message.
FIXES (That do not work)
Now it’s funny that Windows tells you to reinstall Outlook Express because the program actually comes embedded in the operating system. Don’t mistakenly think that a Microsoft Office disk will correct this because the mail client MS Office installs is “Outlook” and not “Outlook Express”.
So because the program is embedded in Windows you cannot reinstall it in any traditional way. Going into Program Files > Control Panel > Add Remove (Windows Components) will only actually remove shortcuts from the Desktop or Start Menu.
So now you would think the logical thing to do to fix software that is embedded into your operating system is to do a Windows “Repair”.
This was a huge mistake on my part. Because I had all the most current Windows updates and I did the Windows repair this forced Internet Explorer to roll back from 7.0 to 6.0. Because IE and OE are embedded in your OS, and are tied so closely together this totally borked Outlook Express. Now the program wouldn’t load period. *sigh*
So after checking online for some other ways to “reinstall” Outlook Express someone recommended that installing the latest service packs should take care of the problem.
I went ahead and downloaded all the latest Windows updates and got the program back to a point where it would startup. Although I was still getting errors when I tried to access the address book.
Other methods that failed to work were the numerous registry fixes people recommended, or programs that supposedly repaired corrupted DBX files.
Finally I came across a blog with a fix that was written out so easy I was sure it was bound to fail. It’s funny how sometimes the most simple solutions are no where to be found on the internet or the Microsoft support pages about their own software. The solution went as follows:
SOLUTION:
The solution was to rename the file extension on any instances of the Windows Address Book that show up on the system. To do this you need to first open a search window.
Start Menu > Find > Files or Folders
In the search field type
*.wab
This tells the computer to search for any files that end with the WAB (Windows Address Book) extension. Make sure you have selected the “All files” option in the search window so it is not limited to a specific type of file.
When the search is complete it might have found a couple files with the WAB extension. Right click on each file and select the “Rename” option.
(You need to make sure you can see the file extensions in order to rename the extension. If you cannot see the file extension open Windows Explorer (Start > Run > Explorer > Enter) and go into Tools > Folder Options > View, and uncheck the option for “Hide Extensions for Known File Types“. You should now be able to see and rename the file extension.)
Rename the file/s from “Addressbook.wab” to “Addressbook.old”. Once they are renamed the system should no longer be able to find the existing address book, so when you re-launch Outlook Express the program should create a fresh address book from scratch.
This will not help you recover data but it will allow you to access your address book once again. From here you can re-import your old address book data to recover your contacts. If you did not back up this data beforehand you will need to recreate your contacts, but hopefully this will have helped get you to a point where this is possible.
Thanks for checking out Pseudorant. We appreciate the support!
How to Install Firefox in Linux using Apt-Get
Installing Firefox using the Apt-Get Command
Hey all! Today we are going to cover another Linux article for beginners on how to install Firefox in Linux using the “Apt-Get” command.
When I first installed Kubuntu on my laptop I was using Konqueror to browse the net. It is a nice browser but it was giving me some trouble displaying certain menus in WordPress and on sites like Google video, etc.
I decided the best thing to do would be to install Firefox. I was familiar with Firefox from using it in Windows and I knew there was a version of Firefox for Linux. I checked on the Firefox website and there was a Linux version I could download but I didn’t know what to do with the file once I had downloaded it. We will cover that type of installation in another article.
What I ended up doing was using the “Apt-Get” command to install Firefox. I am not a big command line guy but this was actually much easier than I expected it to be.
Apt is “a Debian tool used to manage packages. When a user installs a package on a system, it also searches for and then installs or upgrades all the necessary dependant packages to make the package work. The actual command is apt-get.” -webopedia.com
This is great to know because it is saying that when you use the Apt-Get command it will also download any other files that are needed for the software to run properly.
So now that we understand what Apt-Get is and why it is useful let’s install Firefox.
The first thing you need to do is open a console window. This can be done by clicking on your K-menu:
K-Menu > System > Konsole – Terminal Program
Once the console opens you will need to type the folowing command:
sudo Apt-Get install Firefox
Once you have typed this hit “Enter” and Konsole will ask for your root password. Type in your password and hit “Enter”
You should now see some system messages in the Konsole window as the system downloads and installs Firefox onto your system. Once it is complete it will bring you back to the command line in Konsole.
Go ahead and close your Konsole window, and now you should be able to open Firefox on your system. Go to:
K-Menu > Internet > Firefox Web Browser
Congratulations. You just installed a program using the Apt-Get command.
As you can see this is a very useful command because of how easily it allows you to install applications on your system.
One thing I ran into when writing this article was that I already had Firefox installed. When I typed in:
sudo Apt-Get install Firefox
I got the error message:
sudo: Apt-Get: command not found
If you get this error message try using the following command:
sudo /usr/bin/apt-get install Firefox
I am not sure why I got the error because it originally allowed me to install Firefox using the standard Apt-Get command without the /usr/bin/.
This might be because you already have the program installed which I did in this case. If you would like to remove the program you can always type:
sudo /usr/bin/apt-get remove Firefox
This will uninstall the program you would like to remove from your system. This covers the basics of installing and removing programs using the Apt-Get command.
In future articles I will cover Apt-Get in more detail but for now this should give you enough to get started with it. If you would like to know more about Apt-Get and its usage type the following command into the Konsole:
man Apt-Get
I hope this article helped with the basics of using the Apt-Get command. In the case of the “Apt-Get: command not found” error, try the “/usr/bin/apt-get” command I listed above. This worked for me and resolved the error message.
Thanks for checking out Pseudorant. We appreciate the support!
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