Hello,

I recently went through the process of transferring all my data from a
failing hard drive onto a new one. Everything went smoothly for the
most part, except that during the process I got an error message saying
that my windows profile got corrupted. I found out how to troubleshoot
the corrupted profile and restore it with this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=8...21120121120120

and that restored most of my settings, except Outlook settings for some
reason. Luckily, my Outlook .pst file was still there (I had also
backed it up onto an external source). When I try to open the old .pst
file and copy the information into the new .pst file that Outlook
created for me, my contacts (many, many valuable contacts I use for
work) are not there! They are not there in the version of the .pst on
my external source, or on my computer. I went all over the Microsoft
Support site for tips and couldn't find any reference to this specific
problem, except one article that mentioned finding a *.pab file in your
computer (Windows Explorer found no file with a .pab extension anywhere
on my computer). Any ideas? Even though the old profile was
corrupted, all the information from my old drive is still there so I
can't imagine that it was completed wiped out. I still have the old
hard drive linked up as a slave drive, so I can access it easily.

Stephanie

I've never seen a corrupt profile do anything to Outlook's data file.
All Outlook data resides in one PST file. Are you sure you are opening the
correct file? A PST file with no Contacts sounds like an archive file, not
your main data file (since Contacts are never archived). Search for and open
all PST files you can find.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"Stephanie Sapienza" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hello,

I recently went through the process of transferring all my data from a
failing hard drive onto a new one. Everything went smoothly for the
most part, except that during the process I got an error message saying
that my windows profile got corrupted. I found out how to troubleshoot
the corrupted profile and restore it with this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=8...21120121120120

and that restored most of my settings, except Outlook settings for some
reason. Luckily, my Outlook .pst file was still there (I had also
backed it up onto an external source). When I try to open the old .pst
file and copy the information into the new .pst file that Outlook
created for me, my contacts (many, many valuable contacts I use for
work) are not there! They are not there in the version of the .pst on
my external source, or on my computer. I went all over the Microsoft
Support site for tips and couldn't find any reference to this specific
problem, except one article that mentioned finding a *.pab file in your
computer (Windows Explorer found no file with a .pab extension anywhere
on my computer). Any ideas? Even though the old profile was
corrupted, all the information from my old drive is still there so I
can't imagine that it was completed wiped out. I still have the old
hard drive linked up as a slave drive, so I can access it easily.

Stephanie