blubot Posted January 29, 2005 Share Posted January 29, 2005 hi, wanted to restore my PC (XPSP2) to an earlier date (coz I deleted MS office outlook and forgot to backup my mails )...after selecting the restore date, PC boots normally and then error message appears: cannot restore to this date...No changes have been made to PC...Can someone pls help...is there another way to restore the PC to earlier date?I already tried some other dates with the same result...I read in the forum that disabling the system restore and reenabling it could solve the problem...but doin this means I loose all previous restore points...Can anyone help?Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ripken204 Posted January 29, 2005 Share Posted January 29, 2005 ya just reinstall it, system restore does absolutley nothing, ive tried it a few times before and it didint do anything at all for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ripken204 Posted January 29, 2005 Share Posted January 29, 2005 also instead of outlook just use mozilla thunderbird Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blubot Posted January 29, 2005 Author Share Posted January 29, 2005 But that does not solve the problem...I need to get my emails back...thats why I want to use system restore...pls help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
horsecharles Posted January 29, 2005 Share Posted January 29, 2005 Maybe these tools can help you:http://www.geocities.jp/br_kato/http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htmGood Luck.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blubot Posted January 29, 2005 Author Share Posted January 29, 2005 thanks for the liks to these apps...but it does not solve my problem with the system restore...why does it not work? and I really prefer to go back to the earlier PC setting...rather than retrieving the files manually...as I am no expert... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oftentired Posted January 29, 2005 Share Posted January 29, 2005 Personal Documents such as your email store for Outlook Express and Outlook are NOT included in the critical files protected by System Restore. One must use a backup program for this.To view what is and what is not protected by System Restore look for this file:%windir%\system32\Restore\filelist.xmlHint: Just copy paste that into your Start > Run text box and the file will opened Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blubot Posted January 29, 2005 Author Share Posted January 29, 2005 I dont understand: the system restore returns your computer to an earlier time...so I should be able to go back to the point where I deleted my outlook...then I can backup my mails...and continue with uninstyalling MS office and reinstalling it...how else can I get my mails back if I cannot do the restore....? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puntoMX Posted January 29, 2005 Share Posted January 29, 2005 There are tools on the net that can recover deleted data. BUT that can only be done if you didn´t use (write) that part of the harddisk.Undelete your deleted data, that´s the only way . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oftentired Posted January 29, 2005 Share Posted January 29, 2005 You have a misunderstanding of just what System Restore is. It is NOT your personal backup program. It is a program intended to protect the computer Operating System NOT your personal documents and files.The reason System Restore does not "backup" your personal data is so that your personal data won't be lost when a System Restore is performed. Here is a dialog example of why.Imagine if you will.... Last month on the 15th day you set a System Restore Point at which time you had 50 Document files of great importance in My Documents. This month on the 15th you set another System Restore Point at which time you now have 75 Document files of great importance in My Documents.You discover on the 20th of this month that you have acquired a nasty virus and you have found that after you removed portions of the virus with your antivirus software the negative affects are still be causing your system to freeze and Blue Screen.The solution is to use System Restore to return your system to the properly working state that it was previously in.If System Restore was set to "protect" My Documents and you engaged System Restore to Restore back to Last Months good Restore Point from the 15th. YOU would loose those additional 25 documents of great importance because they would be part of the monitored system changes that occurred between then and now which System Restore would reverse as part of the process of "going back" to the previous working system state.Get it? It is a very big mistake to think of System Restore as your personal backup program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
horsecharles Posted January 30, 2005 Share Posted January 30, 2005 Wait a second-- even if Outlook was uninstalled--per your quote: btw you deleted, not uninstalled it? And you actually took the extra step of going here and deleting?: C:\Documents and Settings\USER_NAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\ etc......as ripken204 suggested, you could just reinstall, or just copy / transfer those files & you can import / read them in another computer....btw if you need to recover deletes, avoid using computer, turning on/off until you can use recovery tools-- did those two tools work? Also re your messages-- you likely hadn't been leaving copies on server(otherwise you wouldn't be here)?.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blubot Posted January 30, 2005 Author Share Posted January 30, 2005 ok thanks, well understood the system recovery feature...so I can basically only retrieve my emails with various recovery apps...however I am really no expert here...how do I know which files or folders really contain my emails...emails...which file extension do they use? basically removed the whole MS office (with add/remove programs)...will it be back on the PC and running normally when I retrieve the files? I am really a beginner here so I am not really familiar with those apps...can someone pls giude me step by step? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oftentired Posted January 30, 2005 Share Posted January 30, 2005 I would go back to step one and deal with your assumption that your email store (containing your saved emails) was "deleted".• Right Click My Computer and select Search• Click the choice to search All files and folders• Type *.dbx in the text area for the search criteria• Click search button to start the searchIf the search results shows you that there are indeed files with the extension dbx you may have found your missing email store. One big clue would be the presence of any dbx files that have the same name as that of any custom folders you may have created when previously using Outlook. If you did not create any custom folders another clue will be the size of the Inbox.dbx file. When it is empty of emails it is a very small file. If there are "saved" emails in the Inbox.dbx it could easily be several hundred Mb in size. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blubot Posted January 30, 2005 Author Share Posted January 30, 2005 windows search did not yield any results..cannot find any *,dbx folders/files...however using a recovery application, it can locate a lot of *.dbx files and folders...there is just a lot of them, so which one do I choose that contains my emails? How do I continue? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blubot Posted January 30, 2005 Author Share Posted January 30, 2005 ok so I have this program PC Inspector File Recovery and found in my C drive several *.dbx folders:-Inbox.dbx-Outbox.dbx-Folders.dbx-Offline.dbxHowever something strange ist that the date these files were modified was 07.11.2004, does it mean the mails between now and then are not in these files? How can I now continue? Are these files any use? How can I retrieve the emails? (do I import the files once I have reinstalled outlook?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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