Thread: Recovering emails in outlook express 6

My father recently had a problem with his laptop (acer) and had to insert the repair disk, since then he cannot access or find his emails. Is there a simple lay mans terms of rcovering or finding them, without having to buy software or does anyone have some software i can have for free please.

He has XP service pack 2 and his email is outlook express 6

He needs to configure Outlook Express for his email account, will need username & password plus the providers server details.

Try the website of the provider for configuration details.

I hate to say this but the short answer is no. He should have exported his contacts and mail before attempting to backup or repair. The only way is if say hes on hotmail where their server keeps a copy of old mail for you. Then you can download it again and off you go. I can only say try some undelete software and see if its still on the hard drive and then recovery may be possible.

There is a way, though unfortunately I cannot remember. I once did something and received 4000+ e mails from ages ago.

Had a quick shufty on google, not sure if the answer is here though

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com...268180,00.html

I just got Thunderbird 3 much better

For old emails they will only be on the server if options were configured to retain them.

Outlook Express will have been saving them locally in DBX files. It depends on how the machine was reinstalled.

http://www.insideoutlookexpress.com/faqs/how.htm

http://forums.techarena.in/windows-x...ort/647306.htm

Originally Posted by flynavy

My father recently had a problem with his laptop (acer) and had to insert the repair disk,

Sorry to sound harsh, but he should have read the warnings which said "This will wipe all the information off your hard disk"

Take it to an IT professional next time.

MSR

You could try the shareware here:

http://www.oemailrecovery.com/outlook-recovery.html

It will recover up to 5 objects - IF they are recoverable ?

Then you are expected to buy the full version if you want to recover more - at least it should give you an indication if anything can be recovered.

Once you format the drive and reinstall the OS, which is what the recovery cd will do, your data will be lost.

There are applications which can restore data, even if formatted, but the chances are the files you want are gone.
http://www.easeus.com/ is one such app.

Outlook downloads all the e-mails from the server as one big data file onto the local disk, so once you reformatted the hard drive, the File Allocation Table will have been rewritten, making them impossible to recover directly. You can use data recovery software which will find all the remaining recognisable data on the local drive, and you will then need to find and restore the relevant DBX file, but this procedure can be hit and miss depending on how much overwriting you have done since restoring the OS, as the current OS will think the areas currently storing the data are vacant and will start to overwrite them. There are downloadable applications available which will recover lost data, but they will cost about 30 quid or so and can be difficult to operate.

You can try this, it is free and is from the people who provide CrapCleaner Recuva I don't know if it will work but it's worth a try.