Archive for the ‘Troubleshooting’ Category

Late last week I had an email from Pat asking how she can read her old Outlook Express email messages.  Apparently Pat’s  computer crashed and she’s wondering what her options are.

Whilst this is my official reply to Pat (thanks for writing in Pat), I’m posting this information here in case it’s of use to other users.

Firstly, Pat did not say what type of computer she has now, so I’m going to cover two different scenarios and see where we end up.  Okay let’s get started.

Assumption 1- No longer on XP

Let’s assume Pat no longer has a Windows XP computer running Outlook Express.  What are her options?

Pat, the only way you are going to be able to get your old messages is to ask a computer technican if they can:

(a)  Remove the hard drive and recover the Outlook Express .dbx files.  These files contain all the messages in your Inbox, Outbox, Sent items folders etc.

(b)  The computer technician would then need to create a new user account on a Windows XP machine and import all of those .dbx files into Outlook Express.

(c)  He or she would then need to Export those files to Microsoft Outlook which is the email program that comes with Microsoft Office Small Business or Professional Edition.

Microsoft Outook then stores all those messages in a .pst file format which could technically be imported into one of your computers provided that you have Microsoft Outlook installed.

Note:  If you are now using Microsoft Outlook for email on say a Vista or Windows 7 operating system create a new user account and copy the .pst file into the new user account – as you do not want to wipe out your existing .pst file in Microsoft Outlook.

I also note that this is a very long and time consuming process, and you may want to verify that your technician is willing to do it and what the final price will be.  It’s just not simple or straight forward.

The other consideration is that this will only work if the hard drive in your old computer still works – i.e. it can be put up to another computer and read as a drive.  If that hard drive has bad sectors on it, or it’s burned out, then your next step would be to take the drive to a Data Recovery company.  These companies rebuild hard drives and recover data and the cost runs into thousands.  Therefore, before even considering what I’ve said above you need to determine whether your old computer crashed because of a motherboard failure, or hard drive crash or corrupt operating system?

Scenario 2 – You have another machine running Windows XP Home or Pro

If you do have another working computer running XP, and your computer technican can recover the .dbx files from your hard drive, you can do my free online course about Backing Up and Restoring Outlook Express.

Note:  if you already have Outlook Express running, importing those files would wipe out your existing files.  Two options exist here:

(a)  Either rename the .dbx files from the old machine – eg.  to Inbox_old.dbx, Outbox_old.dbx and then copy them into your existing installation of Outlook Express.  This will ensure you don’t wipe out your existing email messages; or

(b)  Create a new user account on the Windows XP computer that is working and copy the .dbx files into that new User Account using the method taught in my online course.  When you create a new User Account on a Windows XP machine it will create a fresh installation of Outlook Express.  Note you don’t have to add email accounts to send or receive email in this installation – you can just use it to read messages.

Summing Up

The only program that Outlook Express can cross platform with is Microsoft Outlook.  You cannot migrate it to any other email programs that I am aware of.

Outlook Express users with a working installation may want to consider getting themselves a free Gmail account with Google.  Forward any messages you want to keep long term to your Gmail account.  Gmail is online and allows you roughly 7 GB of space so you’ll never run out of space with Gmail.  This will avoid the situation that Pat now finds herself in.

Pat – you could create a Label in Gmail for those particular emails you want to keep forever and just store them there.  The other advantage in using Gmail for email is that no matter how many times you change ISP’s you get to keep your same Gmail email address forever.  Personally I don’t use Outlook Express now – Gmail is so much better.

Bonjour!  So, suddenly, while spell checking you’ve noticed that Outlook Express is using a French spell checker?

If the truth be known, I’d never heard of this issue until clients starting calling.  I Googled the issue and the culprit is Microsoft Office 2007.  You’ve probably installed that recently right?  Or not used the spell checking since then?

Well, the good news is, there’s an easy fix for this.  You’re going to download and install a free program and that will fix it.

These are my instructions:

1.  Go to this site:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/spelloe.html

Click on the blue download button and save the file to your desktop.  See screenshot below:

A file should download called spelloe_outlook.exe

2.  Close Outlook Express  (in fact, close any other open programs just to be safe).

3.  Run the program you just downloaded.  (EG Double click it and it should run).

When it’s finished installing open Outlook Express and see if that fixes the problem.  Many of my clients have followed this procedure and their spell checker is now back in English.

I’ve had a few emails lately from people who can’t open their Outlook Express emails.  There may be no easy work-around for this.  In the worst case scenario your Windows XP operating system could be corrupt.  It’s important to understand that Outlook Express is installed while your XP operating system is being loaded onto your computer.  It’s not something you can add later, or uninstall and reinstall.  It’s a part of the whole XP system and therefore perhaps requires professional attention.  It also works in harmony with Internet Explorer.  Behind the scenes the two programs utilize alot of shared services.

There are software tools you can buy to fix Outlook Express errors, however, I do not recommend them.  With the amount of fake repair tools and fake antirvirus programs around these days,  one should exercise a great deal of cuation before resorting to a repair tool, expecially one you pay for.

What I do recommend is that if you can’t fix it by rebooting your computer and/or  emptying out your temporary internet files,  follow my backup procedures and backup your Address book and Outlook Express .dbx files if you can.   And backup all your other files as well, such as your My Documents folder, any accounting software you are using, and files you’re storing in other locations on your PC or laptop.

Then, take your computer to a qualified computer technician and get them to reinstall Windows XP for you, if that is the last resort.  (Note:  A really good techie will backup your files for you – just ask if they do that).

You can try installing XP yourself, but unless you are confident in formatting your drive, installing XP and configuring your hardware device drivers, and downloading all the service packs and Windows Updates that is required these days, best not make it worse by trying to self fix it.  There are some things technicians should do and installing XP properly is best done by a professional.  That way you get a nice clean load and everything should work properly again.

Many people also ask me “How does my operating system become corrupt?” and I reply “because it just does”.  Most people need to reload their computer every couple of years.  If you think about the amount of programs that get installed and uninstalled, and the amount of program updates computers do these days (not just for Windows but lots of programs need updates all the time), and then add to that all the times you try to fix things yourself – it’s not too difficult for something to go amiss with the operating system.  It’s life.

Another common problem I’ve seen is that people accidentally fill their hard drives with “too much information”.  Yes, your hard drive is there to store your Operating System, programs and files but it also needs lots of free space as well.   Your computer operating system needs free space to perform.   You can check how much hard disk space is on your C:/drive by going to My Computer, right click on C: drive, select Properties and then look at the diagram on the General Tab.  It will display how much space you’ve got left.

If your hard drive is getting too full, then you want to think about purchasing an external hard drive and moving your larger files there – the biggest files are photos, music and video.  Don’t ever let your C: drive become so full that Windows cannot function, you’re asking for a very big bill from a data recovery company to retrieve your data if it gets near to 100%.

If your computer is infected with Malaware (fake antivirus programs) then it will be effecting the operating system (XP) and that may also explain why Outlook Expres is not behaving.  A professional computer person can far better identify the issue than any internet support article can.

I’ve just received an email from a reader who has lost all their messages!  Ouch.  Outlook Express asked to compact messages upon exiting and subsequently deleted them all in the process.  To be honest, this has never happened to me, so I Googled the issue.  Here’s what I found:

• Apparently this can happen if the compacting process gets interrupted, or the files being compacted are corrupt – Outlook Express will start deleting them!

• It may be possible to restore these messages.  You’ll need to go looking in your recycle bin and restore the file from there. (See link article below for more information on how to do this).

• There is a patch that you can download from Microsoft that will ensure that if Outlook Express ever needs to start deleting messages (as it did in our reader’s case) that a backup of the deleted messages will be made.

I found a very comprehensive article on this subject here – Why You Should Let Outlook Express Compact Messages When It Asks You.  I highly recommend reading this and going through the steps suggested to restore your deleted messages.

In most cases, Outlook Express shouldn’t delete messages when it compacts them, but it’s important to let it finish.  That said, from research, it has happened to other people, so you can always say “no” or “cancel” when you are asked if you want to do this.