I have a problem with Outlook 2007 on Windows Vista, which started today, without major upgrades and such.

The first symptom is the message "Could not create the work file. Check the temp environment". The common solutions for this problem do not help: the temporary internet files directory is in its proper place and is accessible. However, the directory Content.Outlook is marked read-only and Windows does not allow me to change permissions (or even view them). I also cannot delete files from it.

This may be a symptom of a larger problem, because also some images on web pages are not displayed by Internet Explorer, but this seem random: they come and go. Both problems seem to have started at the same time.