Accessing old email after reinstalling Windows XP

[lwowen]

We had some virus problems and ended up reinstalling
Windows XP.. All of the email we had under outlook is
gone. Is there anyway to find this on the hard drive and
if so how?

 

[Solution Guy]

This all depends how you reinstalled Windows XP. If you
formated your hard drive then there is no way back. If
however you installed over the top then if you look in the
sub-folders in C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\ you might find
your old emails which will be in a file with an
extension .PST, maybe even called OUTLOOK.PST. Once you
have located the file you can Import it by using the
Import/Export option from the File drop down menu.

If you did format your hard drive there is only one other
way you MIGHT be able to get some\all of the data back,
and that's by taking the drive to a specialist that
recovers data from drives that have been trashed. This is
usually expensive though so it may not be a viable option.