Windows Problems and Solutions

Outlook Express crashes with the PGP plugin

When you first launch Outlook Express on Windows ME, a handful of users notice an error message that looks like a classic Windows crash notification: “Explorer has caused an error in COMCTL32.DLL. Explorer will close…”. The message appears right after the program opens, closes the window, and then everything seems to return to normal. Even though the error clears up after the initial launch, it can be unsettling and can interrupt productivity if it happens again. The root cause of this hiccup lies in the integration of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) with Outlook Express. PGP ships a plug‑in that injects decryption and signing capabilities into the mail client, but early builds of the plug‑in contained a bug that triggered the Windows shell when the client started. The problem is especially prominent with the 5.5 SP1 build of Internet Explorer that ships with Windows ME because the shell expects a different DLL layout.

The easiest way to avoid the crash is to uninstall the PGP plug‑in altogether. If you rarely need to decrypt or sign messages within Outlook Express, you can simply remove the plug‑in and use PGPTray, a standalone decryption utility, whenever you need to handle encrypted email. PGPTray will access the same key database and decrypt messages in the background, leaving Outlook Express free of the faulty code. To remove the plug‑in, go to “Add/Remove Programs” in the Control Panel, locate “PGP for Outlook Express,” and click “Uninstall.” After the process completes, restart Outlook Express and verify that the error no longer appears.