Hi There! I've got an .PST file in outlook 2000. All of a sudden it seems to be corrupt. Every time i want to open it i get something like the following message: The properties of the informationservice has to be defined before you can use this informationservice (translated from dutch, so it might not be the actual message!) Micorsoft advises to use some kind of tool, shipped with office 2000, which must be able to retrieve the messages. To do so it creates a backup file and scans the file for messages and folders. Following the documentation there should now be a folder in outlook called lost and found or something... First of all, i don't get this folder. Second the data must still be in there, cause the file is about 350MB in size. I also tried an hexeditor to see if i can retrieve some data, but it's all encrypted! Can anybody help me out with a method or tool to retrieve my messages??!?!?!? Thanks a lot!!!

It sounds like the personal folders service is missing from the client. Tools - services - personal folders should be listed, along with personal address book, microsoft exchange server etc. If it's not there try adding it in, then try opening the .pst again.

Try www.computer-recovery.com they are good at this type of problem and can recover damaged pst files.

check that the .pst hasn't been marked "read only" if it's been moved at any point

Search for a file called scanpst.exe on your computer and run it. It will fix your corrupted pst file. Andreas