Outlook 2010 Blocks Windows 7 Shutdown

Question

Is there a way to make Outlook 2010 close automatically on Windows 7 shutdown? In my experience, Windows 7 will not shutdown automatically if Outlook 2010 is running. I have to either select forced shutdown option or cancel and manually close Outlook 2010.

Outlook closes cleanly when I do it manually, but I thought Windows compliant apps were supposed to shutdown automatically when the OS shuts down. I read the about the registry hack to automatically run forced shutdown, but I don't want to go that route...

Answer 1

Here's the correct order of operations when shutting down or rebooting a computer. Note that these are user tasks, not computer tasks.

1. Close all running applications.

2. Shut down or reboot computer.

Answer 2

Check Outlook options under send/receive. You may have it set to send/receive on exit which will cause Outlook to take too long to close, prompting the force shutdown message.

Answer 3

It is also possible that Outlook isn't closing fast enough. The only way to make Outlook close faster is with a more powerful computer. More recent versions of Windows have been aggressive about logout times and will prematurely popup the "Force Shutdown" message. An idea would be to lengthen the WaitToKill timers in the registry.

Answer 4

This seems like a strange coincidence. I've been having this Outlook shutdown issue for months, but no error msgs or other sign of trouble. Over the last week however, Outlook started getting APPCRASH errors on startup. Starting it a second time would get past the error.

I did some research on APPCRASH errors and ended up running SCANPST.EXE. It found and fixed errors in my .OST file. Afterwards, Outlook started up significantly faster and no more APPCRASH errors.

Then, I decided to leave Outlook open, shutdown and leave it for 10-15 minutes just to see if Outlook would eventually shut down on it's own. Guess what? Outlook closed automatically within seconds and Windows continued shutdown normally!

That's what they call killing two birds with one stone. Thanks to all for your quick responses.

Answer 5

The Outlook window has closed, but in reality, the Outlook 2010 Process is still running. Use the Task Manager to check this is the case.

We have a number of machines in the Corporate, where Outlook 2010 is taking several minutes to close, and is always noticed when the user is shutting their PC down.

Another way it is noticed, is when the user accidentally closes Outlook. When they click on the icon to reopen, Outlook appears to not start. The 2nd and subsequent instances are held up until the original process ends.

The only notes we have found regarding this is the Outlook Fast Shutdown feature, and Large OST files (Offline Cached Mailboxes).

To date, we do not have a successful fix. We are reducing OST file size, and in some cases, deleting completely and rebuilding the OST.

J