Back in 2007, I wrote an article about an error that you get in Outlook when you have too many attachments of the same name:

Even Outlook 2010 has this problem.

In the article, I walk you through deleting these files by hand.

It is not an easy thing to do. You need to open the registry, find a key…then use that key to find a random folder name.

I thought it would be cool if we could build a utility that would do this for you. So, that is what we did:

It will automatically scan your registry, find all Microsoft Outlook attachments, and then display them to you in the main window.

If it all looks like stuff you want to remove, you just hit the “Clean Up” button and it will delete them for you.

Here comes the bonus. You can run it silently from the command line.

What would you need that for?

You might have user that opens lots of attachments, and runs into this bug all the time.

Here is how you can have it run without any prompts:

OutlookCleanup.exe /SILENT


It will quietly scan through your registry and find the temp folder and empty it. Throw this in a batch file and have it run at logon – you will never have to deal with this problem again.

Another thought came to mind while working on this: This is a security problem too.

While email is on your Exchange server…it is relatively secure. Not knowing this you might open a sensitive document, read it, and when you are finished – delete it. Unknown to you, Outlook has just made a copy of it and it is sitting right there on your hard drive. Waiting for someone to grab.

Until MS provides a fix, you can use this little utility to keep your Outlook attachments clean. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for an update – this bug has been around since 2002.

Get your copy from our free downloads page

I have been playing with Windows 7 again. While reading through a few Windows 7 blogs, I came across an article that described how to change the Logon background in Windows 7.

If you have not had a chance to see Windows 7, this is what the default logon background looks like:

Very similar to the layout in Vista, but, in Windows 7 you can change it.

Microsoft has added this feature for OEMs…so in the future I would imagine the logon screen will be filled with Dell, HP, ASUS, etc.

Before I talk about our free utility, let me explain what needs to be done if you want to do this yourself without our free program.

To make the change you need to first open regedit, and create this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background

Then once you have created that key, add a new DWORD Value named OEMBackground and set it to 1

Now, you need to place the image file (It must be a jpeg) in the following folder (You may need to create some of these folders along the path)

%windir%\oobe\info\backgrounds

The file must be named backgroundDefault.jpg – and very important – it must be under 256KB in size, or windows will ignore it.

Sound like too much trouble to change the background pic? Then you can use our free utility:

The program will take care of the registry changes…and better yet it will reduce the image size to fit into 256 KB. It makes it very easy to change the background.

Here is the download link:

W7BackgroundUpdate.exe

As always – no spyware, adware – only freeware goodness

I recently received a question from a reader:

Hi Steve,

It is very informative; however, it was almost what I was looking for. I would like to change the default OPEN location, so I was wondering if you know how that would be accomplished.

Very good question. It could be useful to have Outlook open to the folder of your choice when clicking on the attachment button – especially if you send lots of them every day.

The default option is that it opens to the documents folder:

The bummer is that after lots of research, I have come to the conclusion that the only way to change this is to change the location of your “My Documents” folder

You can change the folder location by right clicking it on your desktop, and going to properties. Or you can dig into the registry down to this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Find the “Personal” value, and change it to your folder of choice. From that point on Outlook will default to that folder when you go to attach a file. The side effect of this is that it changes the location of your “My Documents” folder – so this is a trade off you will need to consider.

That is the only way I know to change it. If anyone else has a better method, please email me (support@intelliadmin.com) or drop a line in the comments.