Outlook PST gone after AVG Upgrade

Hello,

We have an XP PC, without Outlook 2003. It had AVG 2012 installed on it, and was upgraded to 2013. This morning, before installing the 2013, Outlook started up and was working fine. After installing 2013 and rebooting, Outlook is reporting it can't find it's PST file.

Both Outlook.pst and Archive.pst seem to be gone. We have hidden files set to be shown, as well as OS System files set to be shown. If we go into Control Panel -> Mail, we see the outlook profile, and we can see the path to where they should be. We've searched the entire PC for .pst files, and checked the recycle bin, and even a deleted file recovery program. The original pst files seem to be gone.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Next step is to pull the drive and run a full fledged data recovery program.

Thanks!

 

The only suggestion I would have is not to use the computer at all until you are ready to attach the drive to another machine and run data recovery. Every time you boot it you increase the chances of your lost files being overwritten.

Oh, and if recovery is successful, think about backing up!

 

Another thought - I wonder if your .pst files could be in AVG's virus vault? I'm not familiar with AVG but found this which hopefully might help.