ExpressConnect/Outlook Issue

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If this works you're a legend. I've been pulling my hair out for days! Can I ask how you figured this out? 

Ha!  I appreciate the kind words.  I have now had well over 40 systems that have experienced this issue and this has fixed every one of them.  I have also had a many of them disconnecting from Teams with Express Connect installed.

This issue was complicated by installing the most recent Windows Updates and also our endpoint protection (Sophos Intercept X).  I removed all of the those as well as the Windows updates which didn't resolve the issue.  I eventually went back through and saw the C:\Program Files\Express Connect folder was created slightly before this issue started popping up on my PC.  So I researched that a bit, figured it was not required and uninstalled it.  Instantly fixed.

My estimate of 7 hours is on the low-end.  I'm betting it was double that in lost productivity.

Not that I think it matters but the  .  This is affecting multiple PCs among all different models so it isn't specific to Precisions or that specific service tag.

Thanks for sharing the solution @96Chevyz71 !

I took the liberty to highlight the solution from your post for better visualization.

Please report this issue "up the chain." That update is definitely buggy and it should be patched or pulled so it doesn't cause this problem for others.

So, did you solve the issue removing both ExpressConnect Drivers & Services and Dell Optimizer Service from Add/remove programs?

Thank you for taking the time to post this solution.  I'm going to try it on some of my many computers that have been suffering from this same issue for months.  I won't know if it fixed the issue for a day or two, as the problem is somewhat intermittent.  One user was forced to restart the laptop 5 times a day if they wanted to use Outlook and Teams.  Others would only have to restart 1 time a day.

We have tried scrubbing all O365 traces from the computer and complete reinstall of Office 365.  We have tried removing the user profile, upgrading to Windows 11, deleting the Outlook Profile and rebuilding it and none of these attempts have fixed the issue.

I've notified my Dell rep that brand new computers shipping from them 4 months after this was posted still have the issue.  

I can also confirm that this is not limited to the Precision series laptops.  We also have had several Latitude 5520's that have had the same issue.

I can also confirm that when Outlook stops syncing with emails, Teams would also lose some functionality, particularly with the access to file shares in Teams and Sharepoint.

Even if you close Outlook, it will keep running in the background because it can't close.  It will show up as greyed out icon.  Even if you end the task, and then open Outlook, it still will not connect and deliver new email.  Only a full restart of the laptop will fix the issue.

I only removed the ExpressConnect Drivers and Services.  I left the Optimizer installed.  The issue with the way I did it is if you run Dell Command Update and install any update to Optimizer, ExpresConnect is reinstalled and you are back to square one.

We still have the same issue and do the uninstall when it pops up.  I noticed that each time Outlook was closed, it was not able to be opened again without restarting the computer.  I had to restart my PC over 14 times in one day.  I'm glad I took the time to figure this out becuase it has crushed us recently.

Thank you.   Didn't see the issue until I deployed 11 laptops.  And 9 of them are having outlook not connecting after a while.   I hope that dell recognizes this and fixes it. 

Yes, removing Express Connect resolved the issue and I posted this so maybe it would help others experiencing it and with any luck Dell would pull the update. That hasn't happend yet though.

96Chevyz71,

I see that you resolved the issue yourself.