outlook express recover accounts, identities, wab, dbx, oh my!

thanks, war1

I can read data from the old, dead hard drive, but can't boot it. So, I don't think there is any way to do a regedit on that drive.

I am unable to run the old Outlook Express, so, I can't back it up.

Dennis

Dennis, then you have to manually recreate the accounts in the new drive.

If the email accounts have webmail, you can ask for new password if you forget your old one.

> then you have to manually recreate the accounts in the new drive.


Are you sure? Don't know if I should hold off and see if someone has a different answer, or if I am really stuck. If I am really stuck: Curse you Microsloth!  

Dennis

Since you did not save the accounts in OE, and you do not access to registry, then you have to recreate the account settings.

Awwwwwwww poop! (Can I say poop?) Ya know, the freakin admin of the computer should be able to do this.

OK, I'll get new passwords from the ISP, start over from scratch, and I might as well download everything the ISP has (so I don't get a second copy of every email when I connect up.)

Thanks, war1

Dennis

Dennis

From what you stated in that last comment, it sounds as though you had your Outlook Express account set to leave a copy of emails on the server.

Is your ISP email account a proper POP3 one, or is it one of those like AT&T Yahoo that is really webmail, but offers the Yahoo Plus! (or whatever it's called) additional functionality of being able to download to a pop3 mail client?

I'm not sure that I see your problem with creating a new account in Outlook Express and copying the recovered *.dbx files into that account's "Store Folder", other than perhaps having forgotten your password.

I'm not sure if you are aware, but every new setup of Windows will create a new {long-number} in the key:
\Identities\{long-number-here}\Microsoft\Outlook Express
even if you know all the account configuration details and replicate the account you had on the last setup.

There isn't much sense in trying to create a new registry key with the exact same {long-number} as existed for your Store Folder on another computer.  You should be able to do as follows:

Create the new Outlook Express account, even using partial details.  Just enough to configure it as an account that displays with the normal folders in OE.  At the moment all you want to do is get the old emails from the recovered *.dbx files to show in that account, the downloading of new emails can come afterwards.

Go to Tools > Options > Maintenance tab and click on the "Store Folder" button.  Copy the path to where the store folder is for that account, and open Windows Explorer to that folder.
Alternatively, look for the "Store Root" value in the registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{FE38A582-31AF-4AB8-8964-A60FD46FC907}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0
in REGEDIT.

*** Close Outlook Express ***

Rename the *.dbx files in the folder, eg. Inbox.dbx to Inbox.old, etc.

Copy all the *.dbx files from the slaved hard drive into that folder.
Note: Make sure that they are not "Read Only".

Open Outlook Express and see if the emails now show.

If that has worked, then you can look up your ISP's support pages for the correct Outlook Express account configuration to get it working and downloading new messages.

As far as your Address Book is concerned, you can do one of two things after you locate your *.WAB file on the slave drive.  It will most likely be named after your profile name on the last computer, but you can easily check it's contents by double-clicking on it.  The *.wab file is just a database.  Windows uses the program WAB.EXE to open any *.wab file.

1. Open the new address book from Outlook Express toolbar button and choose File > Import > Address Book (*.wab)...
Browse to the *.wab file you identified as your previous one.

OR

2. Locate your Address Book on your new computer by opening Regedit and navigating to the key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Wab\WAB4\Wab File Name
The (Default) value in the right pane will specify the path to it.  You can copy your old address book in there and rename it to what the registry says (obviously deleting the empty one already in there) OR modify the registry to reflect the existing name of your Address Book *.wab file copied into that folder.

As far as your Outlook Express Mail Rules, etc go, then if you are desperate to reinstate these there are utilities that allow you to load registry files and view them as though you were using Regedit.  Some allow you to export specific keys out to *.reg files.  All you would need to do with such an exported *.reg file would be to open it in Notepad for editing, and do a Find and Replace. You find the old User Profile Name and {long-identity-number}, and replace all instances with the ones present in your new registry.  That would then give you a *.reg file to merge with the existing registry and recreate your Mail Rules.

Michael Mutl has some very useful freeware and shareware utilities here:
http://www.mitec.cz/

Windows Registry Recovery - Open Registry Hive Files (eg. the USER.DAT in the Documents and Settings\UserName folder of a slave drive) and view much the same as Regedit.  Allows you to export to Regedit4 *.reg files (Note: may not support some of the registry data types found in XP and later):
http://www.mitec.cz/wrr.html
http://www.mitec.cz/Downloads/WRR.zip

Mail Viewer - allows you to open *.dbx files from any folder and save the messages out to *.eml files.
http://www.mitec.cz/mailview.html
http://www.mitec.cz/Downloads/MailView.zip

I'm sure you could find your old mail rules from the User.dat file on your slave hard drive and export to a compatible *.reg file format for merging back to your current identity after doing a search and replace in Notepad to make the sub-keys match the current identity keys.

Let us know what you think.  There are other similar utilities that can help.

*** Ignore the "caveat" statement above.  I just tested MailView 1.20 and, when dragged and dropped into a new folder in the OE interface, the *.eml files that have names minus the usual : ' type characters are recreated with the correct display titles.

Problem solved?

I was out of town, and just got back. I'll try this tomorrow. Thanks BillDL for the time you have taken to help me!

Dennis

Sorry it took so long to give you the points that you earned.