Restoring saved email and address book

[Bob Weber]

I had to reinstall Windows XP Home and in the process created a new user
account as the administrator type. I've lost my saved email folders and
messages and my address book. Is there anyway to recover any of this???

Bob

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I had to reinstall Windows XP Home and in the process created a new user
account as the administrator type. I've lost my saved email folders and
messages and my address book. Is there anyway to recover any of this???

Bob

Probably, unless you the reinstall formatted the disk.

But how you would do this would depend pretty heavily on what program you
were using for email.

If the disk wasn't formatted and if you were using Outlook Express and the
Windows Address book, do a search for *.dbx and *.wab files. They will be
in the old user account folder structures. You can simply import these,
but you may need to take ownership of the folders first:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

HTH
-pk

 

[Bob Weber]

I didn't reformat the disk, only installed windows. I was using IE6 for
email. My original Documents and settings folder is still present on my C:
drive but no .dbx or .wab file show up in a search. What is the extension
of the compressed email files?

Bob

From: "Patrick Keenan" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 8:02 PM
Subject: Re: Restoring saved email and address book

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I didn't reformat the disk, only installed windows. I was using IE6 for
email. My original Documents and settings folder is still present on my
C:
drive but no .dbx or .wab file show up in a search. What is the extension
of the compressed email files?

IE6 isn't an email client. If you were using IE6, you were probably using a
WebMail interface and looking at files stored on a server, not on your
system. The point of this kind of mail system is that the files aren't on
your computer, so you can get access to them wherever you are. This is
very different from normal POP/SMTP mail clients which remove mail from the
server - that mail is *only* available on the system you download it to
unless you take further, more complicated, action.

So you need to log on to your account at your ISP and check the mail.

Once you've logged back in, you should see them still there. The key to
demonstrating this would have been that you could see these structures and
files from other computers.

It is possible that some elements may be in the browser caches.

If you don't see them, they may have expired. Talk to the ISP's support
about their mail retention policies.

The .DBX and .WAB files are helpfully stored in *hidden* folders so that it
will be harder for you to mishandle them, or do things like back them up.
You have to search in hidden files or folders, or show them via Explorer,
tools, Folder Options, View. The default search will *not* find them, but
you should find at least a .WAB file. If you've never run Outlook
Express, there may be no .dbx files.

For searching, I use a much faster utility free utility called "agent
ransack".
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

HTH
-pk