A client using Outlook 2007 is experiencing freezing issues when accessing the domain's global contact list. Personal contacts are not a problem when accessed outside of a new email.

When the user starts a new email and clicks either the To... box or the Address Book button on the ribbon, Outlook freezes up. Nothing can be selected in Outlook and the title bar does not display "Not Responding." It just sits there and cannot be moved. The only way to get rid of the window is to close down Outlook in the Task Manager.

This is user specific on the affected machine. Any other user logged into that machine does not have this happen. If the user in question is logged into another machine, the issue is not present. I have completely uninstalled Office, removed the directory C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook, rebooted the machine, then reinstalled Office from scratch, but to no avail. CRM client for Outlook has been removed to cross that out.

This is a bit of a tricky issue to search for on Microsoft's support site, as well as the rest of the Internet. Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated.

System is running Office 2007 upgrade from Office XP (2002). OS is XP SP2 (we are not upgrading to SP3 due to issues regarding CRM, Dynamics, and possible database data loss, as described by Microsoft; waiting for them to release a patch). Client is in a Microsoft AD domain running Exchange 2003, but I believe this to be solely client side.

If you require additional information, let me know and I'll gladly give you what I can. Thanks in advance.

I've been working on this machine for hours without any progress. System Restores only cause more issues, but at least I can cross that off my list. I ran Office Diagnostics, but it said nothing was detected as an issue.

Upon opening up Outlook and attempting to create a new message, the same problem happened when clicking the To... box. This time, I had the volume turned on and heard low-tuned dings when clicking on the Outlook windows. Minimizing won't be allowed, but opening up another window (say, IE) and minimizing it doesn't affect the display of the Outlook windows, which shows that Outlook isn't really frozen. Thinking that maybe there is a dialogue box open that I just couldn't see (alt + tab did nothing), I hit Alt + F4 and Outlook started responding again. Clicking the To... box brought up the global contacts.

I have no idea what happened or why it started, but it looks like it's functioning normally again. I still would very much like to know what did this to the machine. If I find anything, I'll keep you all posted.