Graphain's questions

I have a very unusual problem.

I have Outlook 2010 connected to Exchange 2010. This can send emails perfectly to known addresses (that is, addresses in the address book or ones that have been sent to previously).

However, if I put in an address that is unknown, I cannot actually click the Send button in Outlook. (it simply does nothing). Corresponding to this I get errors in the Event Log for each Send click stating "The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action.". However, Outlook shows as connected the whole time, pings do not break, and I have no reason to suspect it has lost connection.

To further complicate matters, Outlook is fine on all other PCs, and this was all perfect until I installed BitDefender on the PC in question and the Exchange Server. Outlook was still fine on these other PCs while BitDefender was installed, but I have removed it from the PC in question and the Server just in case (no success).

Summary: Outlook encounters Exchange connectivity issues when sending to unknown (new) email addresses that prevent the Send button actually working at all. This is isolated to one machine and occurred after installation of AV/Firewall software which has since been thoroughly removed.

If you have any potential solutions I'd love to hear them, as I will be resorting to reformatting the PC in question, and probably removing Exchange because I'm sick of its issues if I cannot resolve this soon.

Big thanks for any help.

Update + Clarification

Outlook Safe Mode has not helped.

BitDefender is the suspected cause (only change), but BitDefender has not caused this problem on other identical machines and the problem persists after uninstall so it must have changed something in Outlook if it is the cause.

I have a client (XP SP3) machine where newer drivers have been installed.

Unfortunately while these (audio) drivers fixed mic boost, they have introduced problems such as no input working and random unnamed devices in applications that select the audio device. I need to revert the drivers.

However, rollback does not work (something about the drivers weren't backed up) and manually selecting the older driver is futile as XP just ignores it, stating, in its infinite wisdom, that the current driver is better and so I'd have no reason to want to use the older driver.

I know on printer drivers I can just delete - is there an option for other drivers?

Btw. I have done some research and can't seem to find a definite answer so I think this will be of help to plenty of others as well.