Have I missed something? Outlook 2003 has started automatically downloading
messages from my ISP's mail server even when Outlook has not been started on
my PC or after it has been shut down.

After this has happened, the mail backup routines fail with a message along
the lines of "another program has locked part of your email system".

Finally, Outlook will no longer open a URL embedded in a message. I've
looked into the Security settings but cannot find anything obvious.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks.

Dave