Can't send emails

Helpline Q&A Directory

I have a weird problem with Outlook Express 5.0. When I try to send a message, a dialog box pops up saying: 'The message could not be sent. Some of the recipients for this message are not valid. Please verify the names'. What does this mean? I can still connect and download messages and I can still read the messages - I just can't send any.

A reinstall of Outlook Express will help because, according to the Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com), this error is caused by a damaged wab32.dll file. This can also cause the following messages to appear: 'Outlook Express: There was an error opening this message' and 'The Address Book failed to load. Outlook Express is incorrectly configured, please reinstall'.

If the thought of a reinstall scares you, then there is another way: extract a new copy of wab32.dll into the c:\Program Files\Common Files\System folder. This is easy to do if you have Windows 98. Click Start, Run, type sfc and click ok. Select 'Extract one file from installation disk'. In the 'Specify the system file you would like to restore' box, type wab32.dll, then click Start. In the Restore from box, select the location of your Windows 98 CD-ROM. In the 'Save file in' box the location should be c:\Program Files\Common Files\System.

Click ok and follow the instructions to complete the process. Under Windows 95 you need to use the command line extract program. The command you must type (all on one line) is:

Extract /A d:\Win95\win95_02.cab wab32.dll /L "c:\Program Files\Common Files\System"

This is assuming that D is the letter for your CD-ROM drive.