Help...with Outlook recovering old e-mail

[deez]

I need some help recovering old e-mail from Outlook saved as a .pst file. This is what happened...my boss got a virus (actually 2) that funked out Windows ME and he had over a years worth of e-mails saved. Windows can't be reinstalled but the hard drive is still accessible. SO I put in a new drive and a fresh copy of Windows and Office and stuff and I'm trying to access the .pst file through Outlook (same version) and so far this is what I've done.

I cant go into the old Outlook and export b/c Windows is inaccessible but the files are still there... but maybe corrupted. So from the new copy of Outlook I tried to import the .pst file from the other drive and it gave me the following error messages

1) "properties for this information service must be defined prior to use"
2) "... not a personal folders file"

This is a rather large .pst file 95Mb so i'm sure that isn't helping much. I've tried monkeying with various settings and doing it manually but it just messed up Outlook. I dont know what else to do...anybody have any ideas?

 

[deez]

bump

 

[adovbs]

maybe I'm not clear on what you've tried so far, but - did you try going in and replacing the current outlook .pst file with the old one and seeing if the emails showed up? I'm asking because a friend did that with outlook on win2k, and although I didn't think it would work, by golly it did!

just a thought,
Adovbs

 

[deez]

Yeah I tried replacing the file and that didn't work so then I uninstalled/reinstalled office and dropped the file into the same directory as the existing file and did a manual search and that didn't work either.

I think it messed things up b/c the file is so large. thanks 4 the help though

 

[adovbs]

Yeah I tried replacing the file and that didn't work so then I uninstalled/reinstalled office and dropped the file into the same directory as the existing file and did a manual search and that didn't work either.

:-(

Well, keep us posted, especially if you manage to get it fixed. Outlook is so flakey that this could probably happen to anyone.

Adovbs

 

[Guero]

I have had better success using Outlook Express to import old e-mails. I then export it and Outlook has no problem using the new file.

 

[deez]

I tried using Outlook express also with even less luck. I cannot use the original outlook export feature so I can only import as a .pst and it wont let me import that type of file at all with Outlook Express

 

[Guero]

In Outlook you went to the "Import and Export" under the File Menu, then selected "Import from another file or program", then selected "Personal Folder File (.pst)". What error message did you get? Are there any errors in this file?

 

[deez]

Yes I tried doing that as well as several different other things and these were the two different error messages

1) "properties for this information service must be defined prior to use"
2) "this is not a personal folders file"


???

 

[Guero]

Try a search on Google for +pst +repair +outlook. Look for a program that repairs pst files and hopefully that will help. Other than that I don't know what more you can do. Good Luck!

 

[gone_fishin]

You said this all started from a virus. The file is probably corrupted from getting the virus through the email. Perhaps an antivirus program can scan the file and quarantine the virus in it.

 

[deez]

Guero...thats how I got this far...posting here was pretty much my last hope. Other option looks like sending the drive to a professional to recover the files. Only problem is that there is sensitive info. on the drive.

gone_fishin...the virus came through e-mail and actually lived in the ME system restore folder due to auto-backup feature in ME and this folder cannot be quarintined or written over only deleted. But the virus created strings of file names that are too long or unrecognizeable and undeleteable by Windows.


I think its pretty much a lost cause but thank you everyone for the suggestions. So the moral of the story is export your outlook e-mail to another program every so often just to be safe.

 

[NTX-Zoner]

If the PST file is corrupted, MS did build in a repair fuction.

If you can't open your Personal Folders file (.pst) or Offline Folder file (.ost) file, or you suspect that your .pst or .ost data file is corrupt, you can use Scanpst.exe, the Inbox repair tool, to diagnose and repair errors in the file. Scanpst.exe scans only the .pst or.ost file, making sure that the file structure is intact. It doesn't scan your mailbox on the Microsoft Exchange server.

Scanpst.exe is installed when you install Microsoft Outlook and is located at:

drive:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033\

For detailed information about running the tool, see the Help file, Scanpst.hlp, at the same location.

 

[NTX-Zoner]

We used that quite a bit at my last job and it does a decent job. It might take up to an hour to scan 95 MB. That definately better than a 2GB+ one decides to go TU

 

[deez]

I'll give it a try in a little bit thanks for the tip.