Pays to go to bed and sleep on a problem. Thinking about my address book during the night and it hit me - I ALWAYS back up my registry and this problem seemed to begin when I used CCleaner on the registry. Sooooo promptly in the AM imported all the backups of registry into same and voila! My address book is working! No error messages!

However, the general system seems to be down today due to weather I think where I am so can't proceed to test OE further. But then my other email program, Thunderbird, is experiencing same problem. When system revives will see how OE functions then.

Downloaded your other safer registry cleaner so will look at it. Will also run *.wab and see what comes up. ****** Just peeked at OE and mail is coming in! Think I am home free! Must have been my inexperience with CCleaner that caused the 'tummy ache' in my registry

So again thanks for your follow through - will do a final post when all is working well here. BTW have IE7 and am learning how to get used to it Bit different isn't it?

May I tack on another question to satisfy my curiosity? What do you think of Vista? Worth upgrading a PC for? I am not a 'bells and whistles' PC user so XP is accomplishing what I want at present, but Vista is 'tickling my curiosity'.

Donna

That's good to hear
Do you still have your contacts in the Address Book?

Regarding Vista, I am in the same mind as you - I'm curious but not enough to upgrade for the sake of upgrading. I find XP is pretty stable, and the price of Vista is a bit steep. I would get the OEM (Cheaper) version if I built a new system - if I pass a computer on then the operating system goes with it, so reinstalling on a different computer would not be an issue.

I'm also a bit dubious about the visual effects, as I would always be thinking they take up processing power that could be better used elsewhere.

My take on the bottom line - the cost of upgrading hardware and buying Vista would be not be far short of buying a new system with Vista pre-installed. I think I'll wait for my present system to blow up then get a cheap base unit and swap my drives into it.

All seems to be going well on OE. So think I am back in the ball game.

Yes, me too re Vista - when this system goes (and it is only a year old) then the new one will already have Vista on it. By that time maybe all the bugs etc. will be out of it too.

That 'safer' RegClean I do remember from long ago. Had it and forgot all about it when I got my new system. So best I stick with that and the TuneUpUtilities program I have. They should keep the old registry in fair shape.

Enjoyed working with you throughout this session. You have been most patient and helpful plus this site is surely supportive to PC users like me. So once again thanks and when I am trouble again - will be back.

Donna

Pierre did the work here!

I find I rarely need to clean out the registry - the space saved and the performance gains are usually not worth the effort.

It was only last year that official Win98 support was withdrawn

_________________
Never stop learning

For heaven's sake did not notice there were two gentlemen responding to my posts. No Mister 2 I do not have any contacts now but not much of a problem. Have options set so that anyone I respond to, their address goes in my Address Book. Won't be long before everybody will be back
in the Add. Bk.

Am beginning to believe a registry left alone is a healthy registry. The MS reg clean will suit me just fine. Though CCleaner did a fine job, a great deal of what was listed there, I do manually anyway. So all is well.

And now thanks to BOTH gentlemen.

Donna

Amazing what a night's sleep does. Glad to see it is all working again. Nothing like taking backups - I take a full backup weekly to DVDs and the disks are stored away in a safe. I have an old version of Norton Ghost that resides on a 3.5 floppy.

Settings for CCleaner:

Applications.

Tick Firefox/Mozilla, Download History, Internet Cache, Internet History, Applications, Adobe Reader 8.0, Google Earth, Nero Burning ROM, Internet, Google toolbar, Google Toolbar 4.0, MSN Messenger, Sun Java, Quicktime Player, Quicktime Player Cache, Real Player, Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, Utilities, Grisoft AVG 7.0, Spybot Search and Destroy, WinRAR, WinZIP, Windows Defender, MS Paint, MS Wordpad and Regedit.

That is the way they are set on my PCs. I don't use the registry cleaner part at all but use the M$ one.

Vista - steer clear of it for the time being. It is not worth the money. Old hardware may/will not run on it. In Jan 2008 there is a huge Service Pack being released for it as well. So there is my 2 cents worth.

Like you I backup regularly too. I have what I think the call a memory stick or flash drive - anyway it is huge and has the feature that when I backup on a weekly basis it just copies what is new or the latest changes in my system. At least this is what I was told.

And will set my CCleaner to your specs in case I need to use. Think I too will leave the registry alone and just use MS regclean.

I also have Spybot, Ad-Aware and malicious tool remover I think it is called as well as AVG AV programs. So plus MS RegClean and CCleaner - hope to keep my PC in top shape.

Most people in the know seem to have same opinion re Vista. Will keep my eye out for a PC that has it on and check it out there - maybe our Home Depot might have same on the PCs they are selling.

So have a good one you all 'down under' and 'across the pond' - we in the USA are hanging in.

PS - Pierre thanks for the tips re CCleaner.