I think a phishing email broke my Outlook
Published February 27, 2009 | 
This e-mail comes to me through my website from Lois.
Her e-mail was quite long-sought edited it to save some space.
Here is a little information about the machine I’m using. It’s a custom made desktop is running Vista. I have had it about two years. I get my Internet connection through EarthLink, and I run their e-mail through Microsoft Outlook. I have recently started having problems, and I’m not sure if it’s with EarthLink, Outlook, or both. For the past several months, I have received several phishing e-mails from PayPal. I forwarded to spoof@PayPal.com and then delete it however, over the last two weeks or so, I have received several of the same phishing e-mails I have been unable to forward. I can pull up the forwarding e-mail and address, but I cannot send it. After I close out of the forwarding e-mail and the phishing e-mail, I find that I am not able to open any e-mail. If I close Outlook completely, I find that I am unable to reopen the unless I restart the computer.
Thank you in advance.
Hello Lois, thank you for asking your question.
You did the right thing by forwarding the phishing scam e-mails to spoof@PayPal.com.
However, not knowing which version of Microsoft Outlook you are using or how you have it set up I can only think of two solutions that may help you.
The first solution is to make sure that you have run the battery of utilities that I have in the downloads section of my website.
First go to the downloads page of my website, once there select the first item, which is the Savemybutt Utilities Instructions, and save it to your hard drive for future use. Download the programs that are listed in the instructions and follow them step by step.
If by chance you have gotten some form of malicious bug on your computer that is causing this problem with Outlook, these procedures may fix it.
If that doesn’t work, the only thing I can think of to do would be to write down all of your connection settings for EarthLink and then reinstall Outlook. Depending on the version of Outlook that you have, you may get the opportunity to repair it during the installation process. If not, he may actually need to reinstall the whole program. Make sure you have all of the updates and see what happens.
And, don’t forget to back up your address book and your e-mail file. If you do a search of your hard drive for a file that looks like this *.wab, that’s your address book, and a file that looks like this *.pst, that your e-mails and contacts.
If you have to install Outlook from scratch, when you open the new installation for the first time you will have to point Outlook two location where these files are at.
I hope that helps.
URGENT! Microsoft Internet Explorer Patch
Published December 17, 2008 | 
We have grown accustomed to Microsoft releasing patches on Patch Tuesday every month and occasionally a patch elsewhere when they deem a vulnerability critical enough to warrant it.
Well, Microsoft deemed it critical enough and is releasing a patch for IE at noon on Wednesday December 17th to fix an issue with all versions of IE.
Now, there are a LOT of blogs, newspapers, magazine sites, etc making a HUGE issue of this.
Let me tell you. Just as before, NONE of this hype is worth scaring you to death or making Microsoft look bad.
First if you have your anti-virus updates and Windows updates set to automatic, you don’t have ANYTHING to worry about.
If you have Windows updates not doing so automatically, then all you have to do anytime after noon on Wednesday is click on Start, then All Programs, and then Windows Update on the menu. You only need to do the Express updates. Done.
The procedure is the same for XP and Vista.
If your anti-virus is not updating automatically, then look for the update feature in your particular brand of software and update it. I would also change the settings to update daily on it’s own. That is the safest protection.
If your anti-virus is out of date and requires renewal, consider removing it and installing Avast Anti-Virus. You can find it on the Downloads page in the menu above.
