Windows 7 Problems with "invisible folders" and creating Mail Profile

[MWE]

I am trying to help a friend sort out some problems on her PC. It is fairly new (6 months old) machine running Win7 (64 bit). The opsys came preloaded with the computer. I am very familiar with WinXP and with Office2003. I have a few hours on Win7 just poking around to get a feel for the layout.

The history is a little cloudy but it appears that Outlook2010 was acquired and installed as a stand alone package (not part of Office 2010). MSOffice 2003 was subsequently installed (a few weeks later) without ol2003 (ol2010 was already installed). Both ol2010 and mso2003 run OK although the owner finds the very different interfaces a bit of a pain and much prefers the old style interface of mso2003.

Automatic updates (opsys and MS Office) are both set to automatic. There is a history of failed updates. When I checked the log file, they all appear to be MS Office updates. I am guessing that the update process is confused by seeing both Office2003 and ol2010. Is that likely?

I offered to install (activate?) ol2003. I did a little preliminary poking around the web to see what problems I might encounter. It appears that MSOffice2003 should run fine on Win7 including ol2003 but any ol2010 profiles should be deleted and new profiles built for ol2003.

I opened ol2010 and checked the location of the relevant pst file (so I could find it when I installed ol2003 and built the new profile). But when I tried to find it using Windows Explorer (WE), I found that the key directory ( … users/owner/documents) was not visible. I tweaked WE’s View settings to make sure all system, hidden and protected files and folders were visible but the documents directory is still not visible. The file is there because when I searched for a *.pst file on the C: drive, the search showed the file to be exactly where Outlook said it was:
C:/ users/owner/documents/outlook files/xxx.pst
Any idea why users/owner/documents is not visible? I thought this might be a privileges issue. There are only two accounts on the system: owner and guest. Owner has administrator privileges. All work has been done from the owner account..

To familiarize myself with profile creation (just in case it is different than WinXP), I clicked on Mail (32bit) in the Control Panel and got a “lack of necessary resources and memory” error. I doubt that the error message is correct (the sys has 4GB of memory and no other user appls were running), but something is clearly wrong. In searching for similar problems on the web, I found numerous cases where people encountered this problem but the answer was “bad install of Win7”. Any thoughts?

Thanks

 

[ChatGPT]

It seems like there are a few issues you're encountering while trying to manage Outlook profiles and dealing with conflicting versions of Microsoft Office on the Windows 7 machine. Let's break down each of the issues you've listed:

Issue 1: Conflicting Versions of Microsoft Office​

• Likely Cause: The failed updates could be a result of having both Office 2003 and Outlook 2010 installed on the same machine, causing confusion during the update process.
• Resolution:

• Consider uninstalling one of the versions (either Office 2003 or Outlook 2010) to avoid conflicts during updates.
• If the preference is for the old interface of Office 2003, you may lean towards keeping that version and uninstalling Outlook 2010.

  Issue 2: Invisible Documents Directory in Windows Explorer​

  • Probable Cause: This issue might be related to permissions or hidden system files settings in Windows Explorer.
  • Resolution:
  []Ensure that hidden files and folders are set to be visible in Windows Explorer. []Check the permissions on the "Documents" directory to ensure that the owner account has the necessary access rights.

Issue 3: "Lack of Necessary Resources and Memory" Error in Control Panel​

• Possible Cause: The error message could be misleading, and the actual issue might be different.
• Resolution:

• Check if there are any corrupt system files causing this error by running a system file checker scan.
• Ensure that there are no other conflicting applications running in the background that could be causing resource constraints.

  Recommendations:​

  1. Profile Creation:
     • To create a new profile for Outlook 2003, you might need to resolve the issues with visibility of the Documents directory first.
     []Uninstalling Office Versions:
     • Consider uninstalling Outlook 2010 if the preference is to use Office 2003 with its familiar interface.
     []System Health Check:
     • Run system diagnostics to ensure that there are no underlying issues affecting resource availability and system stability. By addressing these issues systematically, you should be able to resolve the problems and better manage the conflicting Office versions and create new profiles as needed. Let me know if you need further assistance with any specific steps or if you encounter any roadblocks!