Trouble with PST file corruption

[Jonathan]

I've repeatedly gotten the message that the main mail file was not closed
correctly in Outlook 2007 (in XP), but when I run SCANPST on that file, it
often crashes Outlook next time I attempt to open it. I've tried everything
I've learned from every posting I've read (which is dozens), including
importing the PST file into a newly made profile, and the problem remains the
same. The file is about 600M, and is made up in large part of emails
imported from Outlook Express. I would really like to find a solution that
doesn't involve giving up indexing in Windows and Google Desktop. Help would
be greatly appreciated as my mother's small business depends on this working.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I've repeatedly gotten the message that the main mail file was not
closed correctly in Outlook 2007 (in XP), but when I run SCANPST on
that file, it often crashes Outlook next time I attempt to open it.
I've tried everything I've learned from every posting I've read
(which is dozens), including importing the PST file into a newly made
profile, and the problem remains the same. The file is about 600M,
and is made up in large part of emails imported from Outlook Express.
I would really like to find a solution that doesn't involve giving up
indexing in Windows and Google Desktop. Help would be greatly
appreciated as my mother's small business depends on this working.

If you see this issue continually, then you must have some application that
is not allowing Outlook to close correctly. See if anything here helps:
http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/outlookdoesntclose.htm

 

[Jonathan]

Thanks, Brian--I did see that. My question is, why is SCANPST causing
crashes instead of fixing the problem? Is there anything I can do to repair
the PST file rather than break it further?

 

[DL]

by 'importing pst' did you mean you added the pst to the profile, or did you
mean something else?

 

[Jonathan]

I imported the contents of the old main PST file (outlook.pst) into the new
profile that I'd created. It imported everything correctly (all the folders
were right, and all the contents were there) but the problems persist. It
still gives errors on startup and when I run SCANPST, it results in errors
that cause it to crash on startup with an error message that says the
outlook.pst file had errors and could not be opened. but if I run SCANPST
again on that file, it finds no errors.

 

[DL]

Well importing is never the way to deal with the native OL data file, either
in the Profile configeration you add the pst to the profile, or within
outlook you open the data file.

Do you get the outlook errors if using windows safe mode?

I imported the contents of the old main PST file (outlook.pst) into the new
profile that I'd created. It imported everything correctly (all the
folders
were right, and all the contents were there) but the problems persist. It
still gives errors on startup and when I run SCANPST, it results in errors
that cause it to crash on startup with an error message that says the
outlook.pst file had errors and could not be opened. but if I run SCANPST
again on that file, it finds no errors.

 

[Jonathan]

Yes, I do get the same problem in safe mode--it still won't open Outlook
after I've run scanpst. Importing didn't seem to make anything better or
worse.

 

[DL]

Within OL, create a new data file, set it as default & close the old data
file - how does OL open / close now?

 

[Jonathan]

It seems to work fine with a new data file.

Within OL, create a new data file, set it as default & close the old data
file - how does OL open / close now?

 

[DL]

Then within OL open the old data file, if necessary copy / drag and drop -
not Import/Export - old data to the new data file. Then close the old data
file.
Its allways possible that a single piece of data in the old file is causing
the problem so you may wish to copy data in batches, rather than in one
session.