Problem:
Cannot open WLM main window, but individual components still function. When I start WLM, the WLM 2011 start screen appears on the desktop with spinning circle next to the word "Starting", and it continues in this state, unless I go to the taskbar notification area and select "close window" on the mail icon. So far, I have found that I can use all the WLM components, but just cannot get it to open to the main home page (on the desktop; not speaking of the web version here.) For instance, if I go to the icon in the notification area, and select "new email" or "new contact", the appropriate window will open and function normally. Also, the program continues to download any new mail to the appropriate mail folder. And, I can go to any of my acct mail folders or storage mail folders and open any individual mail just fine in a message window. Another strange thing is that the wlmail.exe *32 process is running (otherwise I would not have all this functionality), but the WLM application is not open in the applications tab of task manager. So something is keeping WLM from completely opening the app.

When the problem started:
I was using WLM fine yesterday. I put the system to sleep for several hours without closing any windows or apps, and then later my wife awoke the system, chose switch users, and then logged herself onto her profile. So my profile was still logged on with WLM still running in my profile. My wife finished her business, and then logged herself off...not sure if she attempted to put the system back in sleep mode or not. Later, I attempted to "revive" the system, but could not do so, even though the computer was running...it was in what I would call a "comatose" state. So I finally was forced to do a hard shutdown, and then I unplugged the power cable for a bit and then replugged and restarted the machine. The 1st attempt would not boot into Vista, and gave some error of which I do not remember, but anyway, I had to go through the startup again, and make a selection in the startup screen concerning how I wanted to proceed, and finally logged back into my Vista acct profile. This is when the WLM would not open.

Some things I have tried:
If I remember in the correct order of things, I believe I ran the windows disk scan and repair first, because somewhere, and I do not remember where, when I was checking things out, I saw a message about the disk, or files on the disk, being corrupt. So I ran this on both the C: and D:. It ran the repair at least twice on the C:, and the whole thing took around 2 1/2 hours or so. I ran Windows Live Essentials repair twice in Programs and Features, to no avail. Both times it just stated that it had been successfully repaired, but who knows if it actually repaired anything. I tried to do two different system restores from the only two that were available...one from around noon yesterday (before the problem started), and the other was from several weeks ago, but both failed with the only message stating that there was an unknown error. So system restore is not going to fix this. I then logged myself off and logged into my wife's account and low and behold, WLM works just fine, with the app opening as normal. So this appears to be an account profile specific issue.

Some thoughts on this problem:
Before anyone suggests to uninstall and reinstall WLM, I really would prefer not to do that; only as a last resort. And I do not see why that should be necessary in this case, since it seems to me that this problem should be fixable, perhaps within the registry, or something else within the app and my profile. I do not know enough about all the things that happen in the background when wlmail.exe starts, that brings it to open the application into the main window.

What I suspect happened is that when I had to do the forced shutdown, and with my profile and WLM still running in the background, this caused some type of corruption to something related to WLM within my profile. Don't know if that corruption would have been in the Mail.MSMessageStore file, one of my two main oeaccount files, or something within the registry.

BTW, all of my mail folders and files are kept in a directory on my D:, and not in the WLM default folder.

Anyone who has seen this specific problem and knows how to fix it, or what to look for in the registry, etc., without reinstalling WLM, I would very much appreciate the help. Especially, if anyone here is a WLM application expert, knowing all the "behind the scenes" workings of this app, and what to look for, thank you in advance.

Partial Log Txt.
Here is txt of part of the log file after this issue started:



[10:35:27.39] 1238 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (msglisthost.cpp:152), failed with 0x8000FFFF
[10:35:27.39] 1238 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (msglisthost.cpp:152), failed with 0x8000FFFF
[10:54:12.66] 1238 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (msglisthost.cpp:152), failed with 0x8000FFFF
[10:54:12.66] 1238 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (msglisthost.cpp:152), failed with 0x8000FFFF
[12:47:31.92] 1238 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (containx.cpp:3220), failed with 0x800CCE05
[13:17:44.71] 1238 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (msglisthost.cpp:152), failed with 0x8000FFFF
[13:17:44.71] 1238 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (msglisthost.cpp:152), failed with 0x8000FFFF

There are a lot more of those entries. Then on next attempt:

Log opened: 2012-03-07T06:56:44Z
*
* Windows Live Mail 15.4.3538.0513
*
*********************************************************************************
[22:56:56.41] 126c Calendar: Chk ERROR: (wcdbtableschema.cpp:339), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.41] 126c Calendar: Chk ERROR: (wcdbtableschema.cpp:120), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.41] 126c Calendar: Chk ERROR: (wcdbchanges.cpp:1208), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.41] 126c Calendar: Chk ERROR: (wcdbchanges.cpp:1246), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.41] 126c Calendar: Chk ERROR: (wcdbserver.cpp:1436), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.41] 126c Calendar: Chk ERROR: (wcdbserver.cpp:1193), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.41] 126c Calendar: Chk ERROR: (wcdbserver.cpp:994), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.43] 126c Calendar: Chk ERROR: (wcdbtableschema.cpp:159), failed with 0x8E5E0519
[22:56:56.43] 1218 Calendar: Chk ERROR: (wcdataset.cpp:169), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.43] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (slimcaleventdatasource.cpp:341), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.43] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (slimcaleventdatasource.cpp:289), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.43] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (slimcaleventlistbehavior.cpp:626), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.43] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (slimcaleventlistbehavior.cpp:554), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.43] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (slimcal.cpp:947), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.43] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (slimcal.cpp:494), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.44] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (browser.cpp:593), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.44] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (browser.cpp:563), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:56.44] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (instance.cpp:3025), failed with 0x8E5E0158
[22:56:57.44] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (duiheader.cpp:8777), failed with 0x84CB0006
[22:56:57.44] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (duiheader.cpp:4766), failed with 0x84CB0006
[22:59:06.63] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (msglisthost.cpp:152), failed with 0x8000FFFF
[22:59:06.63] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (msglisthost.cpp:152), failed with 0x8000FFFF
[22:59:06.87] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (duiheader.cpp:8777), failed with 0x84CB0006
[22:59:06.87] 1218 Mail: Zone_MailChk ERROR: (duiheader.cpp:4766), failed with 0x84CB0006
:58:54Z

Problem Resolved: I finally identified the root cause and resolved the issue late last night. For those who just want to know the simple basics, in case they have a similar problem, it was a a corrupt calendar database file; to be specific, WLCalendarStore.edb, which is located at “(store root folder)\calendars\DBStore”. The simple fix is to rename the file, something like WLCalendarStore.edb.bak, and then try to open the WLM app. This is all it took to properly fix the problem, and WLM app opened as normal again, with all of my accts, messages, and Storage folders intact. The app will generate a new default WLCalendarStore.edb, and if this fixes the problem, you can then delete the renamed corrupt file. You may lose some Calendar info, but you would anyway, if it is corrupt, and I have not been using the Calendar that much anyway. Too bad that it took me nearly a week to remember that the calendar database in MS mail apps is always a prime suspect if the app freezes when opening. I used to know this 10 years ago when I supported thousands of enterprise users, workstations, networks, and servers, etc. But I have forgotten so much now and my memory is not what it used to be....when you do not do this stuff on a daily basis, your skills decline quickly.

The rest of this story is more complex, and I will share a little...(too much happened to go into much detail.) To start, the problem could have been resolved within a minute, instead of a week, had I remembered to check what I explained above. Everything pointed to corruption within only my profile (if you read the details of my initial post). But I didn’t remember about MS mail apps calendar problems, so I spent a lot of time attempting to get to know the application better, as well as other system diagnostics. Let me say this about the WLM log files...if you are not trained to understand them, do not waste your time...I am not trained to understand them, and it was only frustration and wasted time. Remember that I had performed two successful repairs of the app, that did not fix the issue. I knew this anyway, because it ran fine within my wife’s profile. But after several days, I gave in, and completely uninstalled the app. This requires manually removing the default WLM store directory from the C:, and also the WLM directory within the registry, which is HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail, after you have run uninstall from the control panel. I am not necessarily saying these steps are absolutely required in all cases, but that it is a complete removal. It is IMPORTANT to backup your entire windows live mail directory before you do this, if you have never changed it from the default location. Here is why you need to manually delete that directory if you have not changed the default store location. Windows uninstall will not delete it, as far as I know. If there is a corrupt file in there, when you reinstall the SW, it will go back to the same default location for the WLM store directory, which will result in the app still freezing when you try to open it. If you backup that folder, and then delete it, when the SW is re-installed it will have a fresh store to begin with. You could then later migrate elements of the backed up mail folder one at a time into the fresh install, such as accounts, storage folder, etc. Each time you do that, you would close the app., and then attempt to reopen it. If you migrate something in, and then the problem re-occurs, you just found where the corruption is, and you can remove it.

In my case, I have the mail store directory located on my D:, and not the default C: location. So here is some info I figured out during the week that some may find helpful, if WLM app will not open. A quick and simple method to see if the problem is a corrupted file within your WLM store, and not the app SW itself, go to the registry location mentioned above. Select the Windows Live Mail subkey so that all of its entries are seen in the right panel. Scroll down to the value named Store Root. If you double click it, it will open the edit string pop up window. NOTE: If you are unfamiliar with editing the registry, proceed with caution here. Make absolutely sure that you know the exact path to your current mail store. Copy it or make a note of it, so that you can change it back later if desired. Now, you can change the path to anywhere you want, that is simple for you...such as C:\My Mail\Windows Live Mail. It does not matter whether that path currently exists, it will be created when you make the change in the registry and then open WLM. If WLM now opens, you do not need to repair or re-install the WLM SW. You have corruption somewhere in your WLM store.

Foremost, if you cannot open WLM app, the very first thing I would do is to do the steps listed above for checking to see whether the Calendar DB file is corrupt. I believe that often, that will nail the problem right there. If that does not work, then I would proceed to the next step of changing the store path in the registry. If WLM still will not open after that...(go to the place in explore where you created the new store folder and make sure that it is actually there, it should be, and then go back in the registry and make sure the path is still changed there)...if it still does not open, then I would use windows uninstall to do a repair of Windows Live....if there is actually corruption with an app file, such as a dll file, that should fix the problem. If all else fails, then I would un-install the SW, manually delete the default WLM store folder, and manually delete the WLM subkey in the registry, and then re-install the SW. That should definitely fix the problem, but then you have to go through the hassle of migrating everything again, and I have a very large Storage Folder, which is why I did not want to go that route. Actually, to think of it, if the app itself is hosed, and nothing in your WLM store is corrupt, then I would just be certain to have copied the entire contents of the store directory into a different location. Then after re-installing and opening WLM, just go into the advanced mail options where you can point it to where you backed up/relocated the entire “store”, which will have all of your accts, folders, and messages. NOTE: Make certain that you do not delete the backed up store, only the default location. Close WLM and when you open it again, you should have everything back to normal and it should be seamless, without having to migrate/move all those files again, unless you just want to.

I know this is a lot of info, but will hopefully save someone some time and headaches in the future.