Outlook Not Shutting Down

Had a frustrating situation happen this past week where Outlook 2003 would remain on the task bar and running even though my client had shut it down. This caused him to manually go to the task manager and shut down the outlook.exe process. Not a great thing and frequently it would cause problems.

After no success I posted a msg in the Microsoft Partner Private newsgroup and got a response that surprised me a little bit. Take a look at Slipstick's site for a possible problem. Wow nice to hear real world fixes from Microsoft and not have to scour Microsoft's huge site. I've used Slipstick before and it's a great resource for anyone that uses Exchange or Outlook.

The problem? Sure enough Slipstick had it. The Fourelle Venturi Client was the culprit. I uninstalled this and voila everything shut down properly. How did I know it was the Venturi Client? I used another little beauty of a utility from www.sysinternals.com, Process Explorer. I could look at the Outlook.exe process and see the .dll that was holding the process open. A quick Google of the .dll brought me to the Venture client.

Now I've got a satisfied client. Sometimes it's just simple troubleshooting that helps!