Problem:"We apologize for the inconvenience..."

You might as well remove that line since it isn't valid anyway. It won't fix your problem but it isn't doing you any good either.

****
Do you have internet in safe mode?

 

Done on the 1st part, and no, I do not have internet.

 

Let's see if anyone else comes up with an idea. I'll think about what I could be missing and hope that a look at the problem tomorrow might be more productive.

My only thought is to see if Safe Mode with Command Prompt would let you try another Restore Point further back but I am beginning to wonder if the problem isn't some missing file that System Restore doesn't back up.

 

Ok Thank you for all your attentive help today. I really appreciate your generosity. Karma works in mysterious ways. I just helped a single lady move into her apartment today when i saw her struggling to unload a U-haul all by herself.

Also, I have a neighbor with the XP disc who will be coming by tomorrow. I would really appreciate your wisdom on how that should preceed. For example, should we just reinstall right over everything else, or is there a way to save my programs.

 

Thanks for posting that, i was going to say that I have kept a copy of XP Pro from a retired machine if you wanted to try it. It has saved me more than once, i think working with the tools on the disk with sach2 will get you working again tomorrow. See, it's that karma coming around to thank you!

 

FYI-My buddy is coming over with teh XP disc now. I'll let you know what happens.

 

well, it took me all evening and afternoon, but I hired a savvy neighbor kid with all the necessary software, to help me reinstall XP. He made another folder (Windows 2) and had the computer boot from there. Then he linked the My Docs to point to my old data somehow.

It took a while to set up email and everything, but I am back up and running. I just need to reinstall softwares and somehow get my contacts list back into outlook.

Any thoughts ladies or gentlemen?

Thanks!
Greg<><

 

Fantastic! I was hoping that you came back with good news. Did this brilliant kid have any ideas what happened to your system?

I think it's Outlook XP and on, the old emails and contacts are stored in one file, a .PST file. If you change your settings to show hidden files and look in hidden folders, search for .PST and you should have the whole file, maybe two if you have an archive file. Be aware that your email settings are in that file too. I would copy the PST files over to the other drive with an altered name like outlookold.pst and archiveold.pst. I put them right in my documents.

In outlook go to File > Import and Export > Import from another program or file > Personal Folder File (.PST)

 

btw, default location for the PST file is
C:\Documents and Settings\User Profile\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\outlook.pst

It is a hidden folder, i hope it doesn't give you trouble.

 

Awesome, thanks for the .PST tutorial. I believe he saved the old .pst to the desktop, so I can handle that tonight. We think a virus got me. I remembered the computer running slow b4 I did a hard reboot and when It rebooted Windows no longer worked. I have ESET but something popped up right before the hard reboot saying I had viruses and should buy some software or do a scan or something.

Just out of curiosity, is that the purpose of some hackers? Do they infect your machine and then try to sell u bogus software that "removes" the virus?

 

Yikes! Sorry: got the pages mixed up.