Viking -

My harddrive is almost dead. Today I have gone to a friends house, plugged in my c drive into his computer, and I'm slowly rescuing all my files. The hard drive is so fragile, prone to disapearing and having to restart, that it can't handle burning straight off onto CD, so I have to copy file-by-file onto his drive, then burn off onto CD from there.

One question - I need to get my outlook express emails and address book, but where are they held?

270670 - OLEXP: How to Back Up and Recover Outlook Express Data

blueyonder > help > email > outlook express address book

ABC ~ All 'Bout Computers, Volume 10: Backing Up Outlook Express

Don't get too excited just yet, respite.

You have NO idea what state those files are in. There's a good chance they are more corrupt than Bush and his administration.

I was, after your last post, going to suggest that you wait till you got your new computer and try the master / slave option (slaving your old drive to the new one).

That way you could **TRY** using either the import option in your new setups Outlook Express, or at least, try dragging the files / folders into your new PC's untouched OE. Trying to keep directory structure.

I have no idea if that would work, but looks like you only have a one shot deal with your friend at the moment.

Files to be pulling off would be:

.DBX (email), .IDX, .MBX, .WAB (address book) and WA~ files.

But this is far from as simple as it may seem. If you have Outlook installed and used, then the you may need .PST and .CSV files. A lot of these files should be mentioned in the above links.

I'm not on a machine with either OE or Outlook, so can't be anymore help, specially regarding the directory structure. And I've never actually tried rebuilding the email and address book part of OE like your attempting to do.

Let's hope you get a break and the files aren't worthless and corrupt, and it's more or less a straight swap into the relevant directories, assuming your running the same versions of OE.

Someone around here may have encountered this particular scenario before. Like I said though, if the files are corrupt, it's futile anyway. Hope you drop lucky.

Personally i'd pull the files off and stop using the drive -- get the new machine and and slave the old drive to the new one and try an import from within the new OE, also try dragging the entire directory structure over (replacing the new one).

Don't forget to post back wih the outcome as well.

That's unless, of course, you have any further questions.

Viking,

Todays update - I've 'saved' all my word files and about half my jpegs/bitmaps. I say that in inverted commas because obviously there's too many of them to check if they're okay, though the random ones i've opened so far seem to be alright.

Outlook Express - I've also saved the DBX emails and the WAB address book, though, again, until I get a new system and download another Outlook Express, I won't be able to check if they're ok. Also, my version of outlook express would have been installed in early 2001, so that would be ? version?.

I've pretty much given up on fixing the windows registry, though I got a tip off about about running something called delindex before scandisk (thoughts?). My friend thinks it might be the scanreg and scandisk files that are corrupt/damaged.

I'm fairly sure all this wasn't caused by a virus, but simply a dying harddrive. I guess, therefore, I can afford a new maxtor 80gb internal hardrive (which I can pick up for about £40). Maybe then I can just get a cache for my old hardrive, treat it will extreme delicacy, and slowly transfer whatever I can recover.

About the HDD.

If your in the UK you might wanna check out the 80 GB Western Digital Caviar 8MB Cache 7200rpm ATA100 (JB) -- Western Digital WD800JB at ...

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ -- HDD product page.

Not sure if your Maxtor has the 8Mb cache, this does, (similar price) and an excellent drive IMO, and well regarded in general.

The scanregw.exe being corrupt could well be a possibility, as it's more than likely sat on a damaged sector/cluster.

From DOS you could try extracting a new copy of that file by booting up with the ME startup disk and getting to an A:\> prompt again and typing:

ext

and following your nose through the onscreen instructions.

scanregW.exe lives c:\windows and scanreg.exe lives in c:\windows\command and both extracted from:

c:\windows\options\install

But your back down to how much you want to tax the HDD and how much it will take before it ceases to work in any capacity.

*If your .dbx and .wab files are also sat on a bad sector/cluster there's a chance they will be corrupt and worthless as well, which I tried to get across to you above. So don't get to excited just yet.*

Your just going to have to chance the version numbers of OE, you more than likely would have been on OE6 anyway -- certain to be, if you upgraded to Internet Explorer 6.

It's more the updates to the files and there workings that might throw a curve ball.

If you stayed up to date with windows update then provided you stick with the same OS disk (not move to XP for example by buying a totally new machine) then you could virtually replicate OE6 with the same updates, patches you had on before (if you can remember).

And it's page 2 for the 80 Gb WD800JB drive.

It changes ;)

:)