I am in the process of replacing my old computers (one desktop, one laptop) running XP & Office 2007 to new ones running Win 10 and Office 2016. I have one of the new computers and am getting it set up. I am having some problems with email, but I'll put that in another thread as it has to do with POP3 vs IMAP.

The problem here is that Outlook is running very slowly on the XP workstation. It has been getting more and more slow for some time. About a week ago, I mistakenly clicked on a link in an email and got infected with a nasty trojan horse. It brought the machine to its knees.

Yesterday, I had a local tech support guy come in and check it out. He identified the malware and said he got rid of it. He also did some other clean up. When he left, the system was running better than it had for some time and Outlook was starting up and running more quickly.

Last night, on his advice, I started another malware scan using Malwarebytes. I have the paid (Premium) version. When I got up this morning, it was still running. It had completed the scan and found no threats, but was stuck doing what it calls a "Heuristic Analysis". After more than 12 hours, I canceled it and rebooted. The machine is now slower than it was before the tech came. Outlook can take up to 20 minutes or more to start.

I have a call in to the tech again, but it's the weekend now.



Any suggestions as to what to do?

It turns out that it probably has nothing to do with Outlook. The whole machine is slow. I'll have to have the tech guy back. Sorry for the false alarm.

Yes, switch to a Linux distro. Works perfectly even on older machines ( and it's free )

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I'm running an XP machine right now from 2004 and it works fine even before I upgraded the socket 939 Athlon 3500+ single core to a 4800+ dual core 939! It was slow at first because I had to manually set the CPU frequency to the proper setting manually in BIOS. I also have a P3/450 from 1999 Running XP and this Office runs just fine (with 500 megs of RAM)
Perhaps you have some very nasty Malware or Virus or an incorrect driver. Select your Task Manager (right click on Task Bar or press Control Alt Delete to enable ) and it will tell you what is running and will also tell you what the CPU load is with the applications or programs running.
Now as for Linux I used to use it back in 2006 and if there is a problem such as simply installing simple software you have to refer to the CLI AKA command line interface or terminal to do this If you don't know or cant find the command to type in you sit in front of your monitor with on your face. After dealing with Win 10 on my older hardware (socket 939 dual core blacklisted CPU) and limping on a glitchy computer of which every time I received updates the PC would start crashing without any notice and restart and stumbling. I ripped it out by the roots and reinstalled Win 7 because XP isn't supported and you cant get updates on your browser etc. anymore. Okay back to Linux. The latest and greatest installs without my Mouse Cursor appearing forcing me to toggle through the steps with my keyboard and the older versions work just fine but "aren't supported anymore". Where have I heard that before?? Now it's 2017 and you still have to rely on that stupid outdated CLI for problems such as this minor hardware glitch. 2017 and we still need the CLI instead of a much faster user friendly GUI?? Back to Win 7. It reminds me of using DOS commands on my commodore 64 back in 1979/80! If you do a Google you will notice a lot of comments about having to struggle with this as a turn off for most that are considering an alternative such as this "free software"

Funny, I use Linux constantly with a LTS distro and haven't needed the terminal for ages... And my wife ( who I must admit, is computer illiterate) finds it marvelous

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