Importing Email From Outlook.pst

[mikeh420]

A friend had the virus HTML.Redlof.A on his PC for a few months and kept putting off fixing it. Unfortunately this virus is an evil and crafty one. Of the 66000 files on the HDD, 1700 were infected, and REGEDIT, EXPLORER, and NAV wouldn't work, so all I could do reload from "scratch".

Anyway, as I was unable to use MS Office 2000 Outlook to export his email to a file, I was left trying to import the email from a backup I made before I reloaded his Win2000 from scratch. He was logging in as Admin on the old PC and on the new PC I tried importing it as Admin, but it won't give me access, I get a msg about not having rights to the file, OUTLOOK.PST. I figured it saw that Admin from another PC was trying to access the file and said NO. Any tricks on how to extract the messages from that file? It's 415MB in size, so it has a ton of messages in it. Also, I set him up with a Admin account so he wouldn't be logged on as the real Admin all the time.

Thanx in advance...

[Sephiroth]

right click on the pst, and go to properties. i don't have 2k installed on my pc, and i'm too lazy to walk down the flight of stairs to my other pc that does, but there should be a tab that says security. click it, then click add. type Administrator, or whatever the name of the admin account is, hit ok, put a checkmark in full control, hit ok again, then import away

that's assuming the drive is NTFS, if it's not, then i have no clue, because the error you are getting is yes, because the ntfs perms set on that file are only for the previous admin user, not the current ones on this install

[mikeh420]

I tried changing the rights to it from the Security tab and even adding his own account to it as well as Admin, but it still wouldn't let me in. The HDD was FAT32, and now is reloaded NTFS. Would the change of the file system deny me access?

[Sephiroth]

strange

if it was fat32 at first, then there wouldn't be any file system level security on it, and it should default to allowing administrator full access to the file..

have you scanned the system again with a virus scanner after the reinstall to make sure everything is clean? and what is the exact error it gives you when you try to import it?

[mikeh420]

I can't remember the message exactly, it pretty much told me that I don't have rights to the file. (I'm going to give it another try tomorrow, and I'll write down the msg.) Also, right after the install, the virus was found on the Compact Flash Card, which is plugged in via USB, but it cleaned it all, and found nothing when I re-scanned it. I'm thinking the OUTLOOK.PST file was infected when I backed it up, and if that's the case, say bye bye to the email.

This virus is pure evil, it disables REGEDIT, EXPLORER, and NAV, makes DLL files executable. Almost like another virus that, while I was in REGEDIT, the virus ended REGEDIT, and erased the REGEDIT.EXE file!

I just thought of something; it is in plain FAT32 on the CD backup, so I'll try to import it directly from the CD backup, which shouldn't have 'rights' on it since it was FAT32. I've been trying to import the file after copying it to the HDD which gives it 'rights', that might be the problem. Thanks for the insight.

[mikeh420]

I tried again today to import the mail directly from the CD backup and got the same message:

File Access Denied. You do not have the permissions required to access the file.

I'm going to try one more thing and load Outlook on my XP system and try to import the mail into Outlook. I tried with Outlook Express, which I use, and got a msg: "Can't import mail from MAPI client". Most of the important messages have been printed, so it's no big loss. Also, the Personal Address Book would be in WINNT folder?