HELP! Outlook Gone

Well, not really gone.

My wife was trying to access her e-mail, and was promped to insert the Microsoft Office XP Small Business disk. Apparently Outlook reinstalled itself. The reason for the prompt was something to the effect that a file containing data was missing.

My address book/contacts are also gone.

Virus, or Microsoft glitch? If the Contacts/addresses aren't gone, where to find them?

Sorry if I'm not being too clear here. Basically, our address books have disappeared; the computer can't find them, and instead has reinstalled Outlook, or at least where Outlook points to. Were they stolen, or just misplaced?

My HD is partitioned but I haven't bothered to move any Microsoft stuff off of the C drive (I have a 20g OS drive which contains XP Pro and Office Small Business. Every other prog I run is on a partition.)

Suffice it to say I've learned my lesson, and will begin using a web based server instead of downloading everything to my puter first, but I'd really like to get those address books back if possible.

If this is a virus, AVG and other scans you guys recommend didn't find it.

Ideas are appreciated.

 

Outlook contacts, email, etc are stored in a type of file called a "pst" file, usually outlook.pst.

If you search your hard drive for "*.pst", you might find the file that contains your info.

The file, export command (from outlook) can import you information for you. You can also seach for and run "scanpst.exe" on A COPY (never the original) of you pst file if you have trouble accessing it or importing the data.

MS article for this (assuming you use outlook 2002 or 2003):
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;287070

Best of luck!