Outlook PST has disappeared

Hi,
I am having rotten luck. My laptop had the "blue screen of death" yesterday. It wouldn't reboot for awhile, but after running chkdsk it did boot up. Everything seem okay except when I opened Outlook. The only thing that showed was my archive folders. When I tried to open up Outlook, it says my Outlook.pst is not a personal folders file and cannot be opened.

When I did a search for outlook.pst or *.pst, I could find nothing.

Where could my mailbox have gone and why?

Thank you in advance!

 

Were you certain to look for hidden files and folders? There are two places that Outlook keeps pst files (by default)

c:\documents and settings\username\application data\microsoft\outlook

and

c:\documents and settings\username\local settings\application data\microsoft\outlook

where username is the user id you're logging in with.
Note that these files are hidden, so you will have to enable viewing of hidden files and folders on the view tab of the folder options function found on the tools menu of any windows explorer window.

 

I did search looking in hidden files and folders. I was able to find an Outlook.pst with my USER ID settings. I can open the Archive Folder of Outlook and view archived emails, but when I try to open the Outlook.pst, it say it is not a personal folders file.

On the search, it also shows a completely empty file, no KB. (as compared to the archive file of 48 MB.

I had gotten an error message when I was last able to use Outlook. Typical error message, Outlook is having problems shutting down and an "end now" box popped up. Didn't think anything of it until I was unable to use Outlook the next day.

It appears the Outlook data file(.pst) was corrupted or wiped out. However, it now won't even open it. I thought I could create a new .pst with a different name, but I am afraid of wiping out/writing over my old pst.

I am self-employed and Outlook has a few years of very important emails on it.

Can I use System Restore?

Any idea what happened to my old Outlook.pst? It appears it is there, but empty of any emails. However, I can't even open the old empty one.

Thank you!

 

Have a look here and see if this kelps: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/ha010563001033.aspx

 

I have found the Outlook pst. It is empty and using the Microsoft Inbox Repair Tool does not work as I get a message saying they can't repair an empty file.

I do not know what happened to the thousands of emails in my pst. It is not in the recycle bin.

Could chkdisk have deleted it?

 

Have you done a search for *.pst This will list all the pst files - just in case the original filename got changed somehow.

 

Yes, I did a *.pst search. Besides my archive.pst, I do get an Outlook.pst but it shows it completely empty.

The archive.pst is 48 mb, my regular pst should be much larger than that.

 

Well I'd say that if you have a restore point from just before this happened I'd try that - copy any very recent e-mails that you want to keep somewhere else first though - but not somewhere else on the hard drive!!

 

Yargwel,
Thank you for your replies. I sincerely appreciate it.

I assume you mean just to use the XP system restore. I have never used it before, is there anything I should be careful about? I am not using that laptop at this time. Unfortunately, that is the only computer I have ever used Outlook on.

Thanks!

 

Yes I did mean the XP System Restore. But just remember it must have been ON and setting restore points before the problem occurred. You will lose any work done AFTER the restore point chosen to return to so copy any files created after that date BEFORE you restore. See here if you need help using System Restore. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/support/restore.mspx

 

I don't think this will make a difference since the Repair Tool is saying the folder is empty. But, I found something you might check anyway.

Steve

 

Yes, it's turned on. I will try it soon. Thank you very much!

 

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but yes, chkdisk does sometimes have to delete data in order to fix errors in the file system, and I am afraid this might have been what happened here.

Just as a thought, do you have any antivirus or antispam programs installed? both of these programs can "steal" or delete individual email if these are malfunctioning. If you are lucky, they could be in the quarantine or spam folder of the said program. (I would try the system restore first, before worrying about this).

Like I said, though, my guess would be the chkdsk marked the sector which your email data was located as bad or unreadable, and thereby effectively deleted it. At this point, if the email was absolutely vital, I would recommend a data recovery company or, if you want it but do not need it, maybe try one of the data recovery utilities from this site. I don't like the fact that the PST file is present but empty, though- honestly, it would be a better sign if it had just disappeared entirely.

But check those security programs! I've seen antivirus or antispam programs do some pretty weird things if they are not working right.

Best of luck!

Oh, BTW, if you are using XP, is it Home or Pro? It is just barely possible this could be a permissions issue...

Can you copy and paste the file to your desktop?

 

I am using XP Pro, Version 2002 SP2.

Yes, I am able to copy and paste the empty Outlook.pst file.

When I open Outlook, it shows my Archive Folders, which I can access, and Outlook Today, which I cannot access. The message I get is:

Unable to expand the folder. The set of folders could not be opened. The file C:\Documents and Settings\userid\local settings\application data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst is not a personal folders file.

But, this is the only pst file that shows up when I do a search of the entire hard drive.

Thank you!

 

Could this be a permission or password issue? Just a thought.

Steve