Last Updated on: 8th January 2016, 05:26 pm
Excuse me while I geek out for a second.
I had a friend who was having a weird problem. Every time she opened her Outlook Express, she would see a 404 page not found error. It said that the page /help/content/oeip.html could not be found from www.rogershelp.com. I thought this was pretty weird, and couldn’t wrap my head around it. We eventually deduced that this must have come from installing that Rogers bloatware they try to foist on new customers. They told her she needed it, so click click clickedy click, in it went.
Let me take a second to rant. That stuff is completely unnecessary, except for the *sentiment* that one should start off on the internet with antivirus protection. But please, for the love of Pete, get your own antivirus software. Don’t plunk in their av package, along with all their other miscellaneous blobs of goo. They install toolbars, all manner of unnecessary customizations, and they plop them here, there and everywhere.
Anyway, we started to wonder if it was all that bloatware. I removed it. We still had the problem. So, I started to google. I found lots of other people who had the same problem screaming on forums, but for the longest time, all I got were halves of Hijackthis logs and other useless things. They did confirm my suspicions that the Rogers software had a lot to do with it. Then, at long last, I found this article, which, although it was based on Outlook Express 5, turned out to be the way, the light and the truth.
This is the important part.
SYMPTOMS
When you start Outlook Express, an “InfoPane” pane may be visible at the bottom of the program window. Also, this behavior can occur even if you have previously disabled this feature, and every time you restart Outlook Express this feature may be enabled again.
CAUSE
This issue can occur if you upgrade a customized version of Internet Explorer to Internet Explorer version 5.
RESOLUTION
To resolve this issue, use Registry Editor to delete the BodyBarPos and BodyBarPath values from the following registry keys
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\SID\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\SID\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0
where SID is a number representing a user.
For a long time, I was nervous to do this. I have never in my life edited the registry, and I know it’s kinda important. But I marched into those keys, and right in front of my face were the two dirty little demons. I sent the pair of them packing, and voila, Outlook Express was 404 error-free.
So, I hope this helps someone else who has this problem, and even if it doesn’t, I hope it stops a few people from installing that Rogers garbage.
