What To Do When Mcafee Hawkex Add-in Causes Ms Outlook To Crash Abruptly

By Author: John Peter
Total Articles: 70
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There are various application or add-ins that are incompatible with various versions of MS Outlook. Due to this incompatibility, at times MS Outlook may crash, which invariably leads to corruption of the PST (Personal Storage Table) file. In such situation, you should use certain workarounds to remove the add-in or uninstall the application. If that does not solve your purpose, then you should use a third-party PST repair software to repair Outlook PST file.

Let us consider a practical scenario in which you try to create an email in MS Outlook 2003. However, it fails to do so and exits abruptly. An error message is displayed in this regard, which is:

Microsoft Outlook has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

To see what data this error report contains, click here.

In addition, when you see the signature of the error message the following report is displayed:

App Name App Version Module Name Module Version Offset
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Outlook.exe 10.0.xxxx.x Hawkex.dll ...
... version 0000ebbc

Cause:
The most possible cause of this erroneous situation is that you have installed the Network Associates McAfee Hawkex add-in your system, which is incompatible with MS Outlook 2003.

Also, it is quite possible that because of regular crashing of Outlook 2003, its PST file may have damaged.

Resolution:
To resolve this problem, you should contact Network Associates to check whether there is any hotfix to fix this problem. In the meantime, you should remove the McAfee Hawkex add-in by performing the following steps:
1. Click Start | Run.
2. In the 'Open' box, type 'Outlook.exe/safe' and press the 'Enter' key to run Outlook in safe mode.
3. Click Tools | Options.
4. Click 'Advanced Options' in the 'Other' tab.
5. Click 'Add-in Manager' in the 'Advanced Options' dialog box.
6. Clear the check box for McAfee Hawkex add-in.
7. Click OK.
8. Close all the dialog boxes by clicking the OK button.
9. Restart Outlook 2003.

If the problem is appearing again, it means that the PST file has corrupted for which you should use the Inbox Repair (scanpst.exe) tool to scan and repair the PST file for any errors. If the problem still persists, then you should use a third-party PST file repair software to perform PST recovery. The benefits of using such PST repair tools is that the PST file is not modified while repairing it using safe scanning algorithms.

The best Outlook repair software in the market is Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair that repairs PST files created for MS Outlook 2010, 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000. Compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000, this Outlook PST repair utility is capable of repairing contacts, emails (with attachments), calendar items, notes, tasks, journals, etc.