nightmare trying to reinstall PST after vista crash

[the artful dodger]

Help Help!

My VISTA PC crashed after an upgrade, and I had to reformat and reinstall
everything.

Luckily, I had used the VISTA backup/restore function not long before, so
wasn't too worried... However, there is a MS bug that prevents it actually
functioning properly (SO DO NOT EVER RELY ON IT!!!)

As a result, I have had to unzip all the compressed outlook files that were
created on DVD by vista's Backup/restore function. I have several PST files
such as these ones.

Microsoft Outlook The Director-00000017
Outlcontact-00000002
Microsoft Outlook The Director conttact-00000005
Etc...

I went into user\appdata\local\microsft\outlook and put them there in place
of what was the empty .pst files. it has turned into a disaster, as outlook
2007 opened with about ten times the same account, but none of the subfolders.

I tried running the outlook utility (don't remeber what it's called, it's
for repairing corrupt databases). I fixed some of them, and others it just
didn't recognize.

I ended up with the contacts and calendar back in place, but not my files
and iolders, which is all I care about... (calendar & contacts are safe on
the blackberry)

As the data would seem to be available (the PST are all very large) I'm sure
there's a way of getting it all back.

So now I uninstalled Oulook 2007, went and searched for any data/files that
may have been left behind and deleted that also, and now am trying a clean
install. However, Oulook won't open. It is looking for the deleted files...
I point it towards some of the "restored" backups, and all I get are about
five identical accounts with the same inbox, (synccced with my imap inbox)
but none of teh other folders.

Anyone have any brilliant ideas of how I should go about fixing this fiasco?

Thanks millions !!!

 

[DL]

You need to create a new Outlook Profile, uninstalling Outlook has no impact
on the data files or Profile.
Do not copy the Profile, add a new data File then test
Copy any old pst files you have to the Documents folder, not the default
location, then in Outlook, File>Open>Data File......browse to the location
and open them to see what they contain
(From the names given for your pst files it appears that these may have been
created by exporting from your origonal data file, to files as named - never
the correct way to copy outlook data)

 

[the artful dodger]

sorry, can I bother you for more clarification?

-- should I delete the old profile before I do that? Not sure I know what
you mean by "profile". this is just my account info & stuff?

--which document file are you referring to that I should be copying to?

--if the strange filenames were created by the vista backup utility before
zipping them, is there a way to merge all these PST files I have into one?

Many thanks

Tad

 

[DL]

By Profile I mean Outlook Profile, you can create a new Profile via the Mail
Applet in the control Panel, or the Outlook Data File Management shortcut,
if you have one on the desktop.
I have never used the Vista default backup tool, but I would'nt have thought
it would have split, or could have split, your origonal outlook data file.
When you create the new Profile, add a new data file.
Copy any pst files, on dvd to the documents folder.
Once Outlook is running, within Outlook, File>Open>Data file.........browse
to and open one of the pst's in the documents folder to see what it
contains. Then iff neccessary copy data from this to your default set of
Personal Folders

 

[the artful dodger]

Dear DL,

Firstly, my belated thanks for all your help. I was traveling and only just
have been able to follow your advice.

I deleted everything related to outlook, including all the accounts in the
profile, and reinstalled. Followed the steps you suggested. From the long
long list of PST's, only one file, and one archive file could be read by
outlook using the data file open.... The others generated a message saying
that the *.pst files were not pst files.

But at least I retreived two so far

I closed everything and then ran the scanpst utility on the other files
(I've appended them below). Again, I received the following message on
nearly all of them: "inbox repair tool doesn't recognoise the file... No
information can be recovered"

However, on a few of them (large ones, like 837,225 KB), the utility seemed
to work but then would generate the following message: "An error has occurred
which caused the scan to be stopped. No changes have been made to the
scanned file" at which point scanpst just closes itself down.

-- Any suggestions on what I can try next to recover some more of these
files? And why scanpst is crashing?

-- Is it because they were too large? (I thought there was no longer a 2GB
limit since 2003...)

-- On a more general note, what is the best housekeeping/backup procedure to
follow with outlook so this nightmare never happens to me again?

Finally, I suspect that the Vista backup/restore utility actually does do
somethig weird to the files, because I have (should say "had") a number of
large video files on my hard disk. Vista's backup utility broke them into
many smaller files never really exceeding 200,000 kb before compressing
them...

thanks again

Tad

 

[DL]

To backup Outlook data files, with outlook closed simply copy them.
Or use the free MS Backup addin available on outlook site
Personally I use Acronis TI for backup and imaging

If scanpst doesnt recognise the data file, then that data file is too
corrupted or the backup/copy process went wrong
If scanpst attempts to repair, but then errors out, you could retry several
times, sometimes that works.
There are third party tools (paid for) which can be used to recover corrupt
data files