I run Windows 2000 Pro with Office 2000. My problem is that Outlook
    2000 won't remember my saved passwords for my IMAP and POP3 email
    accounts. I wish I could tell you which stupid software or crashed
    caused this problem. But I usually only use Outlook 2000 about
    twice per month for archiving email purposes. Normally I use AOL
    Communicator most of the time and occasionally Outlook Express v6.
    Both of them operate just fine.

    I'm taking a wild guess here, but if I had to pick something that
    may have caused it, I'd say first it was PeoplePC install software.
    Don't worry, I only used it for 12 days and I removed it.

    Below is Microsoft's Knowledge Base answer to the problem. All of
    my below comments are indented with a "BW:" added to avoid any
    confusion.

Save password setting not retained in Outlook
Article ID : 290684
Last Review : August 24, 2004
Revision : 1.0

This article was previously published under Q290684

Microsoft Windows 2000
Important Do not remove the main Protected Storage System Provider key.
This key is not automatically regenerated. If you are not having
password retention problems and you do not remember your password,
deleting the user subkey may result in not being able to retrieve your
mail.

Note If you are a Windows 2000 user, you must have administrator
permissions to edit the system registry.

1. Quit all programs.
2. Click Start, and then click Run.
3. In the Open box, type regedit32, and then click OK.

    BW: I can't run regedit32, as it doesn't exist. I even did a search
    for regedit32.* and it turns up nothing. Can run regedit.exe though.

4. Locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Protected Storage System Provider
5. On the Security menu, click Permissions.
6. Click the registry key for the user who is currently logged on and
make sure that both the Read and Full Control are set to Allow.
7. Click the Advanced button, verify that the user who is currently
logged on is selected, that Full Control is listed in the Permissions
column, and that This Key and Subkeys is listed in the Apply to column.
8. Click to select the Reset permissions on all child objects and enable
propagation of inheritable permissions check box.
9. Click Apply, and then click Yes when you are prompted to continue.
10. Click OK two times.

    BW: I can't do 5 through 10 since I don't even get the Security
    menu nor click on any permissions. Yet I am the administrator on
    this home machine.

11. Double-click the Protected Storage System Provider key to expand the
key, click the user subkey folder that is directly below the Protected
Storage System Provider key, click Delete on the Edit menu, and then
click Yes in the warning message dialog box.

The user subkey folder looks similar to the following example:

S-1-5-21-124525095-708259637-1543119021-16701

Note For every identity that you have, there will be a subkey under the
Protected Storage System Provider key. To resolve this problem in all
your identities, you must delete all the user subkeys folders under the
Protected Storage System Provider key.

    BW: Tried to delete subkey and it tries to, except it reports there
    was an error and it cannot do so. Closed down AVG Resident Shield
    and Ad-watch. No help. Tried booting Windows 2000 in safe mode and
    still no help.

12. On the Registry menu, click Exit, and then restart your computer.

    Anybody have any ideas what I should do now?

    Thanks in advance,

    Bill