Since I posted the below question, I have uncovered one interesting bit of
further evidence that I offer here to anyone who might be able to help me
unravel this.

With respect to the problem described below, Outlook behaves properly when
it is started in "safe mode."  It opens email attachments that are
themselves emails just fine.  It only fails to do this properly when started
in the full (normal) mode.

I hope this helps.  Any ideas out there?

Best,

Tom.

-----Original Message----- 

>Ok, this is either something really obvious (in which case I'll be
embarrassed, but happy >to have it fixed) or something really strange (in
which case I hope someone out there can >lend a hand).  
>
>Tired of increasingly sluggish operation, I recently adopted a "scorched
earth" policy, 
>reformatted the hard drive and rebuilt my system (Dell Dimension
4600/Windows XP Pro SP2) 
>from scratch.  I reloaded all my software, and with few exceptions,
everything seems fine.  
>
>However, there is now one anomaly in MS Office Outlook which I can't
explain or fix.  This 
>issue was never a problem before I rebuilt the system.
>
>I can open MOST email attachments in Outlook just as I always could by
simply clicking on 
>them.  Pictures, Word documents, PDF files, all open just fine.  BUT ...
when the 
>attachment is another email, it will not open.  I click on it and nothing
happens.  In the 
>old (pre-rebuild) system, clicking on an attached email would cause it to
open in a se
>parate window.  Now, nada.
>
>FYI, amongst my security efforts I'm running resident processes from Avira
AntiVir, 
>ZoneAlarm, and Spybot S&D (Tea Timer).  None of these caused such problems
in the past.

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