HELP please! MS Outlook query

[gabbi111969]

Hi all,

I'm really hoping I can get an answer to my problem (one that I like...lol)

Here it is:

I'm trying to help my sister(stubborn, anti-technology attitude, & computer illiterate) with her computer. She is running Win 98 SE. (Her system isn't able to take on a newer one)

I've never used 98 myself. (I went right from 95 to XP)

Neither one of us has the financial means to run out and purchase anything so she's relying on me to get it working. (She lives 80 miles away so it was difficult to work with her)

With that having been said, my first problem is this:

I had stopped her from using MS Outlook Express about 1 1/2 years ago. She had started using NetZero: (Which I finally got her to switch a week ago to a provider (Provide.net) that's local and I've used for 13 years)

Back at that time she made me keep Outlook Express untouched because of her past emails on it.

Well, she was/is having major crashing issues. We can't even defrag. (it freezes during it)

She had Norton on it.(I uninstalled that 1 1/2 years ago and replaced with AVG free, and also installed AdAware)

Well, she continued to have issues(it did run better tho) but I couldn't remain to fix. (I did try to help her over the phone when she had trouble)

I managed to get there a few weeks ago(she was at her wits end with it) (So I've brought her puter home with me to try to get it working better with the intention of eventually reformatting it.)

Well first of all I totally forgot about her needing her Outlook Express files and I (gulp) uninstalled Outlook.

1: Is there ANY way to recover those files??

I've tried to see if there were any .dbx files(the files Outlook Express uses I believe) with no success. (There's no file search option like the one in XP. That I know of anyway)

I'm also trying to figure out a way to transfer her other saved files(pics etc.) to another computer before I reformat. She has no means of burning a CD and her computer won't even acknowledge floppys in the A: drive.......
She has a USB port in the back of her case: I tried to plug a thumbstick into it: however it didn't acknowledge it as a drive.

2. Can I plug her hard drive into another computer to see it as a regular(slave) or other drive so I can at least extract her saved files to back them up? If so, how should I go about it?

Or should I just scrap it all, tell her there was no hope and just format the bugger.

I'm afraid to connect it to my computer. I do have another puter with XP on it to try to plug it into.

This issue is making ME feel like an idiot.. .. Am I going about this all wrong?

I apologize for the length of this post(if it's even understandable)

I would appreciate any kind of feedback.

Thanks,
Janice

[PeterT]

Moving that drive to another PC and copying what u need is probably the easiest. Outlook uses a *.pst file(s) to save emails, contacts, calendar, etc. Not sure where it would be on a Win98 PC. Good luck.

[ctal]

Hi Janice -- Nice to see you back here!

As PeterT indicated, Outlook uses a single .pst file to store all e-mails (incoming, sent, drafts, etc). It is Outlook Express that uses .dbx files, separate ones for incoming, sent, etc. There can be multiple .pst files under Outlook if the user has set up multiple accounts.

You can switch the drive into your computer, and copy files from it, but it might be a bit complex if you've never done this before.

Assuming it is an IDE drive, you would most likely have to re-position the jumper on it that selects master, slave, or cable select. If you were connecting it to the same IDE channel as the existing hard drive, you would position it to either slave or cable select depending on whether or not your computer supports cable select (look to see if your existing hard drive is jumpered as master or cable select). If that connection is already taken, perhaps by the CD drive, you would have to use the other IDE channel and connect the jumper as master if nothing else is on that channel, or slave or cable select otherwise. Obviously you also have to physically mount the drive within the computer (most desktops can accommodate a second hard drive), and connect an unused four-pin power connector that should be present within the computer to the new drive.

The one thing that I'm not certain of is whether it is ok to boot your computer with two "active" (i.e., bootable) drives in the machine, even though one of them is likely going to be a slave. Perhaps someone else can clarify that. If it is not ok to do that, you can temporarily make the second drive inactive using MBRTool, on the Ultimate Boot CD: Ultimate Boot CD - Overview

Hope that helps,

-- Al

[gabbi111969]

Thanks for the info Peter.

However my bad.....it was Outlook Express.

Janice

[gabbi111969]

Hi Al,

Thanks so much for the quick reply.

I have never done this before; boy, maybe I’m in over my head.
(Your instructions are a bit overwhelming)

(I guess it’s a little more complicated than just plugging it in.)(No plug and play eh? lol)
The computer with XP wouldn’t just recognize it as an additional drive automatically?)

I have 2 separate hard drives in my computer. The slave is also partitioned. (unfortunately my EX-husband was the one who set that up before he left.  ) And I don’t think I want to mess with that let alone let her screwed up computer near mine! lol)

I was going to use my son’s computer that has XP which only has 1 hard drive.

Here it is:

My sister’s computer (win98) has two side by side connections (excluding the floppy drive). One is being used. This is really strange; the hard drive is plugged into the CD drive which is then routed to the one connection that is being used.

My son’s computer (XP) has two side by side connections (excluding the floppy drive) also. His hard drive is connected to one and the CD drive is connected to the other.

I suppose this is probably totally ignorant; but, couldn’t I just unplug his CD drive and plug her hard drive into it?

Won’t XP just recognize it as another external drive?

[traveler]

Go with Number 2 in your original post. Back up that drive as soon as you can.

I would recommend a new 120 gig hard drive for that win98se system. They have got to be cheap these days. The hard drive you're working on sounds like it's been in hard service for years. New drive and new install of win98se would do you wonders. Then use the old one for drive 2 in the win98se system as you transfer any needed things.

BTW One of the computers I run is a win98se box 24/7.

[ctal]

Janice,

Yes, I believe that in this specific case you could connect the hd into your son's pc in place of the cd drive, and you would be able to boot normally and Windows XP would treat it as plug and play. The only caveat would be what I said about not being sure if it is ok to have 2 active drives in the system at the same time; I'm pretty sure that would be ok but I'm not 100% certain.

An internal hd is plug-and-play in Windows, but only after it is made to function at a hardware level, which is where my comments about jumpers, etc., come into play.

Computer motherboards (aka mainboards) of the vintage you are describing typically have 2 ide (aka ata) channels, each of which can support 2 devices (one as master, one as slave). Each channel is connected to the 1 or 2 devices on that channel via one and only one cable. The reason your sister's pc has the hd connected to the cd drive, which in turn is connected to the motherboard, is that the hd is the master on one ide channel, and the cd drive is the slave on that channel (there is a master on each channel that is used, and a second drive on that channel would be connected on the same cable, as a slave; the device at the end of the cable is the master). Your son's pc sounds like it has only one device on each channel, each of which would therefore be connected as a master, and the hd from your sister's computer is undoubtedly a master also (or a master in effect via "cable select," which determines master or slave by the position on the cable to which the device is connected). Hope that's clear; it's hard to convey all of this in words!

So I think you can most probably go ahead and substitute it for the cd drive in your son's pc.

Another possibility, that would take some time but would not require you to go inside the machine, is to create a BartPE CD, which is a bootable CD containing a stripped-down version of Windows. You could boot her computer to that CD, which should be able to see an external usb "thumb" or key drive, and use its file management utility to explore and copy files:

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

If you were to do this, you would of course have to select the cd drive as having a higher priority for booting than the hard drive, which is very easy to do -- let us know if you need any guidance on that.

-- Al

Edit: As far as the dbx files are concerned, perhaps you could try to reinstall Outlook Express, and see if they reappear. I don't know about W98, but OE is reinstalled in XP by going to Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs/Add-Remove Windows Components (on the left of the "add-remove programs" window). You'll probably be asked to insert the Windows installation cd.

[ctal]

Janice -- Depending on the version of Outlook Express, the dbx files may be stored in a location similar to the following:

C:\WINDOWS.000\Application Data\Identities\{long string of letters and numbers}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

See if they're still there!

-- Al