[dba-Tech] Outlook PST troubles

Dear Group,

My wife, Janet, has been having trouble at work with a large Outlook
PST file...about 500 MB in size.  They don't use Microsoft Exchange on
their server (they've got Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 on an
HP server); they use one PC with Outlook to gather their messages.  Up
until a few days ago, they'd left copies of all messages on the
server.  They stopped doing that and the server downloaded 14,000 or
so messages to Outlook...so the PST plumped up quickly.  I think they
did that on Thursday or Friday last week.

Yesterday Outlook froze when they went to check email.  Janet
downloaded and paid for a PST repair tool.  When it started the repair
process the PC froze (WIndows XP).  I came there today to try and
help.  We copied the PST file...during the copy process the PC froze.
Janet had shut off the power about 10 times trying to deal with this.

We ran the Microsoft ScanPst.exe program on the copy of the PST and it
successfully scanned through and repaired what it could.  We were able
to open Outlook using that repaired PST and the new email came in just
fine.  However, no history, no sent mail.  So there are still
problems.

We then tried to run the ScanPst.exe program on the original PST file
and the computer locked up.

I've just never heard of XP locking up so regularly because of a
corrupt file.  Any idea what's happening here?

Thanks,

Steve Erbach
Neenah, WI