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trying to gain access to emails on old hard disk
I have been using Outlook Express 6 as my email program
for several years. During 2003 my PC was infected by the Bugbear virus, and although my McAfee Antivirus Software claimed that had been able to repair the damage, I still experienced some problems with my PC, but several months ago something (mysterious) happened so that I was no longer able to boot the PC at all. As a result of these problems I decided to "start all over" but because I had documents, emails, etcetera on my hard disk which I wanted to retain, I followed a suggestion that I install a new hard disk, and reload my software. This has been successful, and I have been able to send and receive emails. My problem is that I have not been able to gain access to my old emails which are still on the old hard disk which is now installed as the second hard disk, now known as drive D: - the new hard disk is installed as drive C: I have been able to identify the file structure used by Outlook Express 6 to hold the email messages, by selecting Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder. Knowing the name of these email files on drive C: I then used Explorer to find the corresponding files for my old emails on my old D: drive, and according to Explorer there are .DBX files which correspond to the various folders which were part of my Local Folders in Outlook Express 6. I selected Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder and was presented with a message: "Your personal message store is located in the following folder" When I clicked the Change button, I was able to use the Browse function to specify the path name of the files on my old D: drive. When I clicked the "OK" button, I was presented with a message: "There appears to be an Outlook Express message store already in the folder that you have chosen. Do you want to switch to using that store? If not, it will be deleted and replaced with your current store" When I clicked the "Yes" button, I was presented with a message: "Your store location will not be changed until you shutdown and restart Outlook Express. I clicked the "OK" button, and shut down Outlook Express, and restarted it, and was shown the list of folders that I expected to see under the "Local Folders" heading. The problem is that when I select any of these folders, instead of seeing the details of all of the emails which should be there, I just get the message: "There are no items in this view" If I use wordpad to look at the contents of the .DBX files which Explorer tells me are on the old drive D:, I can see enough indications that the data is there, even though the .DBX format is for the most part not a text file. I have performed the following test to satisfy myself that I have been correctly following the above process for changing the identity of the store folder. First of all I saved all current emails which I want to keep, but I left a few inconsequential emails in my C: drive folder. I changed to the D: drive folder as described above, and subsequently changed back to the C: drive folder, and was able to get back to those "inconsequential emails" without a problem. I realise that I have written at length to describe exactly what I have done. Please, HOW CAN I GET MY EMAILS BACK? Wilfred |
#2
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trying to gain access to emails on old hard disk
It would have been preferable to Import the D:\ drive data into your new,
C:\ drive Identity and its store. I would try this now but if a DBX file in the D:\ folder isn't larger than ~75 KB, it represents an empty folder and your old data is history. (Deleted DBX files do *not* go to Recycle Bin.) Backing up & Restoring OE Data http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/backup/index.htm http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx How OE Stores your Data (a different {GUID} was assigned to each store) http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/files....htm#storemain 'Moving' the store folder is not the same as 'reassigning' the store folder. HOW TO move your store http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/faqs/how.htm#movestore -- HTH - Please Reply to This Thread ~Robear Dyer (PA Bear) MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE), AH-VSOP AumHa Forums http://forum.aumha.org What You Should Know About Spyware http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/twc/...y/spyware.mspx wilfred wrote: I have been using Outlook Express 6 as my email program for several years. During 2003 my PC was infected by the Bugbear virus, and although my McAfee Antivirus Software claimed that had been able to repair the damage, I still experienced some problems with my PC, but several months ago something (mysterious) happened so that I was no longer able to boot the PC at all. As a result of these problems I decided to "start all over" but because I had documents, emails, etcetera on my hard disk which I wanted to retain, I followed a suggestion that I install a new hard disk, and reload my software. This has been successful, and I have been able to send and receive emails. My problem is that I have not been able to gain access to my old emails which are still on the old hard disk which is now installed as the second hard disk, now known as drive D: - the new hard disk is installed as drive C: I have been able to identify the file structure used by Outlook Express 6 to hold the email messages, by selecting Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder. Knowing the name of these email files on drive C: I then used Explorer to find the corresponding files for my old emails on my old D: drive, and according to Explorer there are .DBX files which correspond to the various folders which were part of my Local Folders in Outlook Express 6. I selected Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder and was presented with a message: "Your personal message store is located in the following folder" When I clicked the Change button, I was able to use the Browse function to specify the path name of the files on my old D: drive. When I clicked the "OK" button, I was presented with a message: "There appears to be an Outlook Express message store already in the folder that you have chosen. Do you want to switch to using that store? If not, it will be deleted and replaced with your current store" When I clicked the "Yes" button, I was presented with a message: "Your store location will not be changed until you shutdown and restart Outlook Express. I clicked the "OK" button, and shut down Outlook Express, and restarted it, and was shown the list of folders that I expected to see under the "Local Folders" heading. The problem is that when I select any of these folders, instead of seeing the details of all of the emails which should be there, I just get the message: "There are no items in this view" If I use wordpad to look at the contents of the .DBX files which Explorer tells me are on the old drive D:, I can see enough indications that the data is there, even though the .DBX format is for the most part not a text file. I have performed the following test to satisfy myself that I have been correctly following the above process for changing the identity of the store folder. First of all I saved all current emails which I want to keep, but I left a few inconsequential emails in my C: drive folder. I changed to the D: drive folder as described above, and subsequently changed back to the C: drive folder, and was able to get back to those "inconsequential emails" without a problem. I realise that I have written at length to describe exactly what I have done. Please, HOW CAN I GET MY EMAILS BACK? Wilfred |
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trying to gain access to emails on old hard disk
Set up a new Identity in OE and then go to File | Import | Messages and
point to the older directory. See if that works. If not, then see point 4 below for various recovery methods. steve "wilfred" wrote in message ... I have been using Outlook Express 6 as my email program for several years. During 2003 my PC was infected by the Bugbear virus, and although my McAfee Antivirus Software claimed that had been able to repair the damage, I still experienced some problems with my PC, but several months ago something (mysterious) happened so that I was no longer able to boot the PC at all. As a result of these problems I decided to "start all over" but because I had documents, emails, etcetera on my hard disk which I wanted to retain, I followed a suggestion that I install a new hard disk, and reload my software. This has been successful, and I have been able to send and receive emails. My problem is that I have not been able to gain access to my old emails which are still on the old hard disk which is now installed as the second hard disk, now known as drive D: - the new hard disk is installed as drive C: I have been able to identify the file structure used by Outlook Express 6 to hold the email messages, by selecting Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder. Knowing the name of these email files on drive C: I then used Explorer to find the corresponding files for my old emails on my old D: drive, and according to Explorer there are .DBX files which correspond to the various folders which were part of my Local Folders in Outlook Express 6. I selected Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder and was presented with a message: "Your personal message store is located in the following folder" When I clicked the Change button, I was able to use the Browse function to specify the path name of the files on my old D: drive. When I clicked the "OK" button, I was presented with a message: "There appears to be an Outlook Express message store already in the folder that you have chosen. Do you want to switch to using that store? If not, it will be deleted and replaced with your current store" When I clicked the "Yes" button, I was presented with a message: "Your store location will not be changed until you shutdown and restart Outlook Express. I clicked the "OK" button, and shut down Outlook Express, and restarted it, and was shown the list of folders that I expected to see under the "Local Folders" heading. The problem is that when I select any of these folders, instead of seeing the details of all of the emails which should be there, I just get the message: "There are no items in this view" If I use wordpad to look at the contents of the .DBX files which Explorer tells me are on the old drive D:, I can see enough indications that the data is there, even though the .DBX format is for the most part not a text file. I have performed the following test to satisfy myself that I have been correctly following the above process for changing the identity of the store folder. First of all I saved all current emails which I want to keep, but I left a few inconsequential emails in my C: drive folder. I changed to the D: drive folder as described above, and subsequently changed back to the C: drive folder, and was able to get back to those "inconsequential emails" without a problem. I realise that I have written at length to describe exactly what I have done. Please, HOW CAN I GET MY EMAILS BACK? Wilfred 1. Don't open attachments. Most computer infections are the result of the user opening email attachments. The attachment usually contains a virus or worm or trojan that infects the system when it is opened. Because of this tendency of attachments to infect, Microsoft has now set OE to block all attachments. See these articles for explanations: Cannot Open E-Mail Attachments in Outlook Express After You Install SP1 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=329570 OLEXP Using Virus Protection Features in Outlook Express 6 (Q291387) http://support.microsoft.com/support.../Q291/3/87.ASP Note that Microsoft does not send security patches in email. See this article: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec...patch_hoax.asp If you choose to adjust OE to allow attachments, make sure you save the attachment to disk first and then scan it with your antivirus software. The most significant thing you can do to prevent such infections, is to educate yourself on what attachments may constitute a threat to your system, and never open any such attachments, no matter who they are from. 2. Turn off Background Compaction. When a message is deleted, moved or marked as read in an OE message file (dbx), then wasted space is generated in that file, and the folder must be compacted to remove that wasted space. By default, OE turns on a feature under Tools | Options | Maintenance called "background compaction", which turns itself on if the folders in your message store get too much wasted space. This feature uses 100% CPU time and slows down your system, while it is active. In addition, if the process is somewhat interrupted, then the entire message store can become corrupt. To prevent such corruption, turn off background compaction under Tools | Options | Maintenance for each Identity you have, and then compact manually and frequently using File | Folder | Compact all. This will make OE more stable. 3. Turn off email scanning in your antivirus software. Antivirus software invades the Outlook Express program to try and intercept (incoming and, in some cases, outgoing) messages that might contain virus. The problem with this approach is that the antivirus software can trigger the destruction of an entire message folder or the entire message store, when it attempts to remove a message containing a potential virus. To prevent the possibility of such destruction occuring, turn off email scanning in your antivirus software. You will still be protected against infection. If you attempt to open a message attachment containing a potential virus, then your antivirus software will recognize that your are attempting to infect your system, and will block you from doing so. The best practice on the user's part is to save an attachment to disk and then scan it with the antivirus software prior to opening it. Messages opened themselves (if you have the latest security updates from Windows Update) will not infect your system -- only attachments. You do not need additional email scanning on top of your system being continuosly scanned by antivirus software, so turn off email scanning to prevent destruction of your message store. From a post by Frank Saunders: From http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...ail,protection Disabling email protection does not leave you vulnerable to viruses and malicious software in email. It is a separate layer of protection in addition to Auto-Protect. Auto-Protect scans any incoming files, including email, as they are saved to your hard drive. As long as you keep your virus definitions up to date with LiveUpdate, and keep Auto-Protect enabled and set to scan files as they are created or downloaded, your system is fully protected. 4. Recovering lost messages. The most significant contributors to lost messages are described in points 2 and 3 above. Turn these options off to prevent message store corruption. If you do lose your messages, you can try using my DBXtract program to attempt to recover the lost messages. Note that dbx files are hidden in Windows 2000 and Windows XP. http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/ Alternatively one can also use DBXpress, which is faster and more accurate than DBXtract, and it also has the capability of reading directly from the disk and bypassing the file system. http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/ If you have upgraded your version of IE and OE or your OS version, and all your messages are lost, then see this article (note that the technique in the article does not only apply to the issue addressed in the article title): OLEXP: Mail Folders, Address Book, and E-mail Messages Are Missing After You Upgrade to Microsoft Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;313055 If File | Import | Messages does not work, ignore the error message, which is erroneous in itself, and try one of the following techniques to get your messages back: a. Right click on each dbx file or a selection of them and go to Properties and clear the read only attribute of the files. Then try File | Import | Messages again. b. Import the dbx files individually. See the last paragraph on this page for how to do that: http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx c. As a last resort use DBXtract or DBXpress http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/ or http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/ See also: http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/probl...s.htm#mailgone 5. How does one reinstall IE and OE? This article seems to work for other OSs than just XP: How to Reinstall or Repair Internet Explorer and Outlook Express http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;Q318378 See point 11 below first. 6. How does one backup and restore or transfer OE messages and settings: See: http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/backup/index.htm http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx Note that there is also a link in this article to MVP David Guess's free OEBackup programs (www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/) 7. Links in email don't work: see the links on this page http://www.oehelp.com/ 8. Outlook Express is slow. See the various performance issues and how to address them on this page: http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/problems/performance.htm 9. Outlook Express won't start. This is usually due to a conflict between what is recorded in the registry and what is in the message store. Often, one can fix this problem by deleting folders.dbx. If that doesn't work, then try moving all the dbx files to another directory and see if that fixes it. Alternatively, see these articles and also point 4 above: http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/probl...ce.htm#nostart http://support.microsoft.com/support.../q245/4/19.asp 10. Address book information: see The Windows Address Book http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/files/wab.htm 11. Installation issues: Most of the problems with a faulty installation are due to other programs running during the install and interfering with the updating of necessary files. Antivirus software is notorious for this. To minimize such interference, in Win98, WinMe, and WinXP go to Start | Run and type msconfig and disable all startup items and non Microsoft services. Then reboot. Then proceed with the installation. Startup items can then be re-enabled. For additional info see: Win98: http://support.microsoft.com/default...65&Product=w98 WinXP: http://support.microsoft.com/default...&Product=winxp Since Win2000 does not have msconfig, one has to manually go to this registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run You can export this key and then delete all values under it. Then disable all antivirus services under Computer Management | Services and then reboot. Then install. After the installation you can import the key back into the registry to restore the values and re-enable the services. 12. Screening unwanted email and Spam Everybody gets unwanted email these days. Much of this email is either trying to sell you something you probably don't want or else is trying to infect you with a virus via an email attachment. What can you do? a. Never open an attachment. First save an attachment to disk and then scan it with your antivirus software to ensure it is not infected (make sure your antivirus software definitions are up to date). If the attachment is from someone you don't know, don't even bother opening it. Its not worth it. See also point 1 above. b. Screen email. Disable the Preview Pane (you can put a button on the toolbar to turn this on and off). Then go to View | Columns and enable most of the headers. That way you can scan the headers and pick out the various obvious unwanted mail. Once you find messages that you don't want to open, select the headers of those messages without opening the messages and perform a Shift-Delete to permanently remove them from the folder. Once they are removed, they will no longer be accessible, so don't do this on messages you might wish to keep. c. On messages left that might be worth opening, go to Tools | Options | Read and check the box that says "read all messages in plain text" (available only with IE6 SP1 or WinXP SP1 and higher). Reading in plain text prevents any returns to the spammer's server, so your email address cannot be validated in that fashion. In addition, it prevents malformed or malicious HTML code from executing. If you find the message is worth viewing as HTML, then you can go back to Tools | Options | Read and uncheck the option to read in plain text only and then reopen the message to view it as HTML (note that you can put this button on a toolbar with OETool (www.oehelp.com/OETool/). You can also use OETool to view the message details without having to open the message. You can also use the "Compact Current Folder" button after deleting to shrink the file size. d. If you get unwanted email repeatedly from the same source, you can set up message rules to block out some of these messages. See the help file in OE and also http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/tips/rules.htm and http://www.mindspring.com/~oe_oh/message_rules.htm. e. If you find a message that is spam and that offends you or is deceptive, go to Message | Forward as attachment and send it to . The US Federal Trade Comission is launching a major crackdown on deceptive and offensive spam. Visit their site at www.ftc.gov/spam for more info. 13. Messages appear blank From a post by Frank Saunders: Several possible causes and therefor several possible fixes: 1. Go to Start | Run and type regsvr32 inetcomm.dll and press Enter 2. Go to Tools | Options | Read | Fonts and set Western (ISO) as the default. 3. Clear Temporary Internet Files and the Temp folder. 4. Turn off email scanning in your anti-virus. 5. Someone else reported that re-installing OE using method 2 in this article fixed the problem: How to Reinstall or Repair Internet Explorer and Outlook Express in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=318378 Method 2 works on earlier versions of Windows. 6. Eliminate any scumware. See Dealing with Unwanted Spyware, Parasites, Toolbars and Search Engines http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm especially http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm#Coolwebsearch Note that AdAware and SpyBot S & D will each catch some things the other won't. Also, each needs to be updated before every use, even when just downloaded. There's also a lot more to do than just those two programs. CWShredder is also available he http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs...cwshredder.zip **Post your HijackThis log to http://forums.spywareinfo.com/ or the Spyware forum at http://forum.aumha.org/ for expert analysis, not here.** Alternative download pages for Ad-Aware, Spybot, HijackThis and CWShredder may be found on this page: http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm. If trying everything at that site does not fix the problem please post back in the same thread. I've left off some issues, but I believe these address the most common problems that users encounter with OE. In addition, please check the websites of the individual OE MVP's that address other issues not listed he Tom Koch: http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/ David Guess http://www.mindspring.com/~oe_oh/ Jim Pickering http://home.comcast.net/~jimpickering/ Frank Saunders http://www.fjsmjs.com/OE/index.htm and my site at http://www.oehelp.com If you don't find your problem addressed, then feel free to post a question in these newsgroups and we will be more than happy to respond and attempt to help. Just go to Tools | Accounts | Add | News and add msnews.microsoft.com as a newsserver and then you can address your question to the appropriate newsgroup. |
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