Turn on System Restore in Windows XP!
To turn on System Restore, follow these steps:
1.Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click
Properties.
2.Click the System Restore tab.
3.Clear the Turn off System Restore check box (or the
Turn off System Restore on all drives check box), and
then click OK.
Backup your Outlook Express Data: Step by Step!
Outlook express data consists of the several parts.
Email messages
Account settings
Address Book (if used)
Mail rules (if any)
Passwords
1. Email Messages:
From the Outlook Express menu select Tools | Options |
Maintenance and click the StoreFolder button. You see a
dialog with the name of the directory that has your mail
files. If you look in that directory you find files
named after your mail folders and news groups. They all
have a .DBX suffix. Outlook Express keeps all messages
in these database files. If you make copies of these
files regularly, you'll have a safe backup of your OE
mail.
Restore (if necessary): To restore the backup data, just
copy it back to the directory. You can selectively
restore folders by just copying specific files back.
Alternatively, you can use OE's File | Import | Messages
feature to import one or more of the backup folders.
Email Account Settings
As far as we know, the procedure works for all kind of
email: The regular SMTP / POP3 based email, MAPI, IMAP
or even the free Hotmail Account, that is built into
Outlook. For Hotmail, however, some messages and
settings might be stored only at the Hotmail server ( =
somewhere at Microsoft !) and not on your local PC.
2. Account settings:
Data about your mail and news accounts are stored in the
registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet
Account Manager. To save this data, start RegEdit and
select that key in the left-hand pane. Then from the
menu select Registry | Export Registry File. Save the
file to a name like "outlook.reg".
Restore (if necessary) To restore the account settings,
right-click the .REG file and select Merge.
Note: As an alternative, you can save the data one
account at a time through Outlook Express: click Tools |
Accounts | Export and specify the name of the file to
save the settings. Be sure to save this information for
every account.
3. Address Book
Getting the data out of your address book for
safekeeping is relatively easy. From the menu select
File | Export | Address Book and select the comma
separated text file as your output format. Then select
the fields you want to export. To make sure you know
where the backup is going, give a full path name. To
restore the address book or to get your addresses onto a
new system, the process is not quite symmetrical. Select
File | Import | Other address book and select the text
file option again. You'll be given a list of fields to
import. Since you're importing a file that was created
by Outlook Express, you usually don't need to make any
changes here. After that, click your way on through the
wizard and you'll get your address book back.
4. Mail Rules
The mail rules are stored at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities.
If you run Regedit and export this entire subkey to a
file the same way you did with account settings: from
the menu select Registry | Export Registry File. Save
the file to a name like "rules.reg".
Restore (if necessary): Under the Identities key each
subkey has a long number that looks similar to
{36753740-2WEE-781D3-89B1-00A0C9900DSA}. So if you have
five different identities in Outlook you will have five
of these long numbers. Below the numbers are all the
settings specific the the identity (signatures, mail
rules,...). If you are restoring without reinstall and
on the same PC these numbers do not change (as far as we
know !) and you can just restore the registry entries by
clicking on the reg file.
5. Passwords
Outlook Express, along with those of most other
Microsoft applications such as Internet Explorer, stores
its passwords in .PWL files in your Windows directory.
There's a separate file for each username on the system.
Backup the files frequently.
Corrupt Outlook Express mail box!
Make sure you have already 'saved' all of your important
messages, then you can do the following to remove the
entire Inbox and recreate it:
1. Start OE, do not select any messages.
2. Go to the menu Tools > Options > Maintenance > Store
Folder...
where you will see the current storage location for your
Outlook
Express files.
3. Click with your cursor in the text box just to the
left of the
drive letter, then drag to the right to highlight the
entire path name
(to the end of the word "Express"), and hit Ctrl-C on
your keyboard to
copy this to the clipboard.
4. Open up Internet Explorer, click in the Address field
at the top of
the window, and paste (Ctrl-V) the path into there, and
hit Enter;
your PC should display the contents of this folder
location.
5. Right-click on the file "Inbox.dbx", and select
Rename, and change
the file-name to "Inbox.mybackup".
6. Right-click on the file "Folders.dbx", and select
Rename, and
change the file-name to "Folders.mybackup".
Note: the above two changes will cause Outlook Express
to recreate
the default folder called Inbox, and the default Folder
list. You
*may* need to recreate any special messaging handling
rules that you
created in the past, if you used that feature of OE.
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