Outlook 2010 crashes when opening an email or using a reading pane

[JimConsidine]

Hello. I've been using Outlook since 1998 and I think I am hitting "the wall" with this particular problem.


A couple of months ago I noticed that MS Outlook 2010/64 bit with Windows 7 OS was acting a wee bit unstable as it was crashing periodically when I would open an email. It was a minor annoyance that I just worked around. About a month ago, I discovered that if I opened the reading pane view for viewing email, the program would crash immediately. And now, Outlook has become a door stop as within the past week, I can no longer open any emails as the program crashes each and every time.
I happened to run a utility program called "Mini Tool Box" yesterday on a "malware hunt" which reports everything that is running on your PC. It also reports faulting applications, which in my case was Outlook 2010. I took the pertinent data from this report and sought a solution. A forum that I came across advised to run the Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe). I did so and the program found errors (it does not quantify what errors or how many errors if found). I let the program run, rebooted, and Outlook continued to crash as before.

I would appreciate any advice on repairing this pesky problem. Thank you.

Jim Considine

The information about Outlook 2010 stated the following:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------Event log errors: ===============================

Application errors:
==================
Error: (07/13/2014 05:10:20 PM) (Source: Application Error) (User: )
Description: Faulting application name: OUTLOOK.EXE, version: 14.0.4734.1000, time stamp: 0x4b58fd6e
Faulting module name: USP10.DLL, version: 1.626.7600.20602, time stamp: 0x4b30507b
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000034d6f
Faulting process id: 0x16b0
Faulting application start time: 0xOUTLOOK.EXE0
Faulting application path: OUTLOOK.EXE1
Faulting module path: OUTLOOK.EXE2
Report Id: OUTLOOK.EXE3
-------------------------------------------------------------------------