when it is taking forever, is norton logo down by your clokcing showing norton scanning emails?
 
do u got plain old outlook installed?
 
 
are you using XP, and have more then 1 user logged in?

oe is slow when it has trouble connecting to the mail server
specially if it's imap instead of pop3
if your not running a imap email turn off syncronization
even if u are i suggest turning it offf anyway

my only other suggestion is to check and make sure that u arent using ssl
 
and it's not searching for imap folders or newsgroups

Tools>Options>General
Check "When starting, go directly to my inbox folder"
 
This sped up my Outlook Express big time.

i use Calypso, which was sadly discontinued by the company. It's the best client I've used in a long time.

Have you got the option to send & receive @ startup of OE turned on? If you have denied it permission to remember your email addies that could possibly cause a bit of a slowdown.
 
Now for a question of my own. Every once in a while OE gets a bit weird about shortcuts in email:
- If I already have an IE window open & I click on a link in an email then nothing @ all happens.
 
- If I don't have any IE windows open & I click on a link in an email then an IE window will open, but it stays blank - nothing in the address bar or status bar & does absolutely nothing.
 
- However, if I drag a link from OE to an already open IE window that works just fine.
 
In the past I think I've solved it with System Restore, but for some reason, although it's turned on, there don't appear to be any restore points, despite me having rebooted a couple of times in last few days during installs of stuff [& @ 1 point to see if it was my ISP being a pain, or whether it was my system (was ISP)]. Anyone know of a fix for this?

ive tried all the above stuff and no dice ;(
still takes about 20 sec to load