[dba-Tech] Outlook PST troubles

Max,

This problem occured, I think, because of the reversal of their
practice to leave copies of emails on the ISP's mail server.  There's
only the one machine that downloads email orders -- this is a retail
food supplement store with a big Internet presence.  For whatever
reason, Outlook had been set to leave a copy of the email on the
server.

I talked this over with Janet last week before they turned off that
feature, knowing that however many messages were stored on the ISP's
mail server would come cascading down to the local PC...14,000
messages as I said.

That, I think, is the genesis of the problem.  I don't know if
auto-archive was turned on.  Backups?  I don't think so.  Janet is the
de facto system admin and has had her hands full trying to understand
network administration along with her other duties.

Where I used to work Outlook was the tool of choice for company email.
 Everybody had an email account and the network admin was very skilled
and kept it humming.  This is a different setup by far.  They've got a
true-blue Windows Small Business Server 2008 box, but Outlook isn't
centrally managed by Exchange.  Everyone with an email account (not
every employee) has Outlook set up as a standalone app on his own
workstation.  No common backup.

Regards,

Steve Erbach
Neenah, WI

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 2:57 PM, Max Wanadoo <max.wanadoo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve, if she had auto-archive on then you may well have a backup.
> Also, your sysAdmin may have backed up the pst file within his backup batch
> routine.
>
> Worth a look
>
> Max
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Steve Erbach
> Sent: 20 May 2009 20:42
> To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
> Subject: [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