Hi - I recently had a virus problem that I couldn't get rid of and ended up having to reformat the hard drive and reinstall.
I have a network hard drive, so I backed up the whole of the PC's hard drive to the network drive. I made 2 or 3 backups over a period of a few days, just to make sure I didn't miss anything.
I have the PC up and running again but have a problem with the restore of the Outlook Express files, i.e. the emails, contact list etc.
I copied the .dbx files over from the network drive onto the PC's hard drive and then used Outlook Express's import tool. Instead of 100s, maybe 1000s of emails (I'm not very good at keeping my emails under control) there are only 10 or so in my inbox, all 2 or 3 years old. Looking at the .dbx files on the network drive they are all quite small (Inbox.dbx 130kb) and have a modified date of Feb 2007. I assume the modify date changes each time the file is written to. I've done a search of the network drive for all copies of Inbox.dbx, looking for one with a larger size and a recent modified date, but all the copies are of a similar size and date.
I'm really puzzled what has happened here, has anyone got any ideas?
Before I started the reformat of the hard drive Outlook Express was displaying all the emails that I would expect. The location of the .dbx files was the default location as far as I know. I didn't realise that this could be changed until recently. Even if the .dbx files where stored somewhere else why isn't my search finding them?
I have more or less given up getting my emails and contacts back but I am very curious what has happened here.
I might well be sticking with Hotmail in the future?
Thanks for any help that you are able to provide.
Cheers
Martin
I have a network hard drive, so I backed up the whole of the PC's hard drive to the network drive. I made 2 or 3 backups over a period of a few days, just to make sure I didn't miss anything.
I have the PC up and running again but have a problem with the restore of the Outlook Express files, i.e. the emails, contact list etc.
I copied the .dbx files over from the network drive onto the PC's hard drive and then used Outlook Express's import tool. Instead of 100s, maybe 1000s of emails (I'm not very good at keeping my emails under control) there are only 10 or so in my inbox, all 2 or 3 years old. Looking at the .dbx files on the network drive they are all quite small (Inbox.dbx 130kb) and have a modified date of Feb 2007. I assume the modify date changes each time the file is written to. I've done a search of the network drive for all copies of Inbox.dbx, looking for one with a larger size and a recent modified date, but all the copies are of a similar size and date.
I'm really puzzled what has happened here, has anyone got any ideas?
Before I started the reformat of the hard drive Outlook Express was displaying all the emails that I would expect. The location of the .dbx files was the default location as far as I know. I didn't realise that this could be changed until recently. Even if the .dbx files where stored somewhere else why isn't my search finding them?
I have more or less given up getting my emails and contacts back but I am very curious what has happened here.
I might well be sticking with Hotmail in the future?
Thanks for any help that you are able to provide.
Cheers
Martin
