Outlook Express .dbx file has vanished!

nmacc

Slightly long story here, but I'm posting the whole thing in case someone can put their finger on what I did wrong.
Friend was running an old XP desktop purely for the POP/SMTP email on an eircom.net account.  Been a while since she backed it up and it was getting a bit reluctant to boot, so she decided to get a new machine and retire the old one after 13 years service.  I told her to leave it running until then; she did, but 48 hours later it died.  Seems to be motherboard failure and she is very worried about her email.
I removed the drive and, finding a machine of similar vintage among my junk, swapped over the drive.   I completely forgot that this major hardware change would trigger the re-activation feature.  Of course there's no more M$ support for XP, so re-activation is not possible.  I therefore made my important drive the slave and booted the junker from its own drive.
After a day of upgrades, re-boots, new virus checker, etc, it was ready to go.

I clicked on the MS Outlook Express shortcut, but I used the one on the important drive - this may have been my mistake.
The program started as if from new with no accounts and no mail.  I was able to import the address book straightaway, but I couldn't find any .dbx files on the disk.  A thorough search including hidden and system files turned up nothing.
I can't figure out where I went wrong and where the files went.  This program was in use on Sunday, but now there is nothing there.  Any thoughts?

CatInABox

nmacc wrote: »

Slightly long story here, but I'm posting the whole thing in case someone can put their finger on what I did wrong.
Friend was running an old XP desktop purely for the POP/SMTP email on an eircom.net account.  Been a while since she backed it up and it was getting a bit reluctant to boot, so she decided to get a new machine and retire the old one after 13 years service.  I told her to leave it running until then; she did, but 48 hours later it died.  Seems to be motherboard failure and she is very worried about her email.
I removed the drive and, finding a machine of similar vintage among my junk, swapped over the drive.   I completely forgot that this major hardware change would trigger the re-activation feature.  Of course there's no more M$ support for XP, so re-activation is not possible.  I therefore made my important drive the slave and booted the junker from its own drive.
After a day of upgrades, re-boots, new virus checker, etc, it was ready to go.

I clicked on the MS Outlook Express shortcut, but I used the one on the important drive - this may have been my mistake.
The program started as if from new with no accounts and no mail.  I was able to import the address book straightaway, but I couldn't find any .dbx files on the disk.  A thorough search including hidden and system files turned up nothing.
I can't figure out where I went wrong and where the files went.  This program was in use on Sunday, but now there is nothing there.  Any thoughts?

Can she still log in to the eircom.net webmail? Perhaps some of her mail will be stored there?

nmacc

Unfortunately no.  She changed her landline to Vodafone, breaking the old eircom link.  Now eir still get the line rental, just filtered through Vodafone, but they don't acknowledge this, and of course they don't get the DSL revenue, so the web login isn't available to her.  As it happens the setup deletes mails from the server when downloaded, so she would only have new mails, although that's obviously better than nothing.

Don't suppose you know a way around the web access issue?

d31b0y

You could try restore the missing information from the drive. Stick the old drive into a working computer and install recuva or something similar. Then do a scan of the usual suspect locations.
e.g. drive:\Windows\Application Data\Outlook Express\

nmacc

Thanks d31b0y,
I upped the memory in the working junker to 1GB and it's working beautifully, but oddly enough no .dbx files on either my drive or the original system drive in the junker.
I tried Recuva but it gave me a BSOD, which was a little upsetting, so I changed to Purian.  This has found a lot of .dbx files, but it's  been running for around 4 hours now and is only 25% of the way through, so we have a bit to go yet before we know if I am out of the unpleasant doggy-doo.
Still don't know what I did to cause this

d31b0y

If recuva caused a BSOD then you may have a dodgy sector or something similar on the hard drive.
Worth checking the minidump file with BlueScreenView, if it was created (I seem to recall XP didn't necessarily create a minidump file automatically).
If it was a dodgy drive, it might go some way to explaining missing files.

Anyway, good that one of the software is finding dbx files at least. Hopefully they'll be what you need.

If the OE mails are the most important thing, I'd be inclined to get the person off XP as soon as you get them back. It'll only cause you ongoing heartache.

bonzodog2

nmacc wrote: »

I tried Recuva but it gave me a BSOD, which was a little upsetting, so I changed to Purian.  

link?

nmacc

Apologies, I miss-spelled it.  Should have been Puran
It might indeed be a dodgy sector, but that wouldn't explain the complete absence of all .dbx files on BOTH hard disks.  Thanks for the BlueScreenView link.

jamesd

With the drive from her pc as slave have you gone to
d:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{12345678-1234-ABCD-EFGH-1234567890AB}\Microsoft\Outlook Express ? Is there anything there?

nmacc

Nope.  Not a thing, except the default OE files will appear on the C drive IF OE has been started
If OE has not been started then there will be no .dbx files anywhere on either drive!

_Kaiser_

So wait...

- Her original machine died, and you pulled the drive out of it and installed it in a 2nd desktop

- When you booted that up, it triggered reactivation so you instead slaved her original drive and booted from the drive the 2nd machine had

Did the machine boot to Windows using her original drive? I'm surprised if so TBH as XP wasn't the best about big hardware changes like that, but if it does can you not just get to the Desktop and check out her OE installation there and copy what you need?

Capt'n Midnight

If all else fails you could try photorec or recuva to recover deleted files