Configuration Issue

[kcnpeppa]

User profile could not be loaded because of a bad block on the hard drive.
ntuser.dat was on this block. To fix this, I created a new account, copied
all files except ntuser.dat, ntuser.ini and ntuser.dat.log as described in KB
article. Everything ported over except Outlook account settings. After
logging into the new account, and starting up Outlook, configuration prompted
for the CD and went through email account setup. How can I restore all
Outlook settings? Thank you.

 

[Brian Tillman]

User profile could not be loaded because of a bad block on the hard
drive. ntuser.dat was on this block. To fix this, I created a new
account, copied all files except ntuser.dat, ntuser.ini and
ntuser.dat.log as described in KB article. Everything ported over
except Outlook account settings. After logging into the new account,
and starting up Outlook, configuration prompted for the CD and went
through email account setup. How can I restore all Outlook settings?

What settings do you mean? What version of Outlook? You should certainly
be able to get all your Outlook data items back. They are probably still in
the Windows profile for the old username.

Personally, I'd be looking at getting a new disk as well.

 

[kcnpeppa]

Outlook 2003 running on XP Pro SP2. Yes, all the files were all there in the
old profile folder tree (Documents and Settings/etc.) and after I created
the account and logged on to create the new profile, I copied them over
replacing applicable files. The mail accounts were obviously not created.
I'm trying to find where this information is stored so if you know ... Yes,
a new disk might be in order although after running some diagnostic software
it found only 1 bad block ... lucky break.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Outlook 2003 running on XP Pro SP2. Yes, all the files were all
there in the old profile folder tree (Documents and Settings/etc.)
and after I created the account and logged on to create the new
profile, I copied them over replacing applicable files.

Never, ever, overwrite PST files with files of the same name after you've
created a mail profile. That's guaranteed to corrupt the profile.

The mail
accounts were obviously not created. I'm trying to find where this
information is stored so if you know ...

The mail accounts aren't stored in a file, they're in the registry in the
key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Sofwtare\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\yourprofilename or in
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-XXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXX\Software... (as above), where the
"X"s are some string of numbers. It's conceivable you could export this key
and import it as HKEY_CURRENT_USER to transfer the accounts, but I'd make a
registry backup before you do and, even if it works, you'll have to reenter
the account passwords.

 

[kcnpeppa]

Thanks for the help thus far Brian. I may have stated this in a way that was
confusing ......

I did not overwrite the PST files. The user logged onto the machine and
created the domain account profile with a new account, "user2" (registry
entries, Documents and Settings folder, etc.) as described in KB811151. The
user then logged off. The files that were stored in Documents and Settings
folder under the old account were then copied to the new account's folder.
All files were copied from c:\documents and settings\user1 to c:\documents
and settings\user2 except the ntuser.dat files I mentioned below. When
Outlook was started, the user was prompted to create an email account because
there were none loaded. It did not pick up the old PST files. It created
new PST files. The only email account for this user is an IMAP account,
however, this user (the owner of the company ... ) has heavily customized
folder settings, views, uses archived mail, has a large number of contacts
and has made extensive use of the calendar including synching with his Palm.
So, there is alot of information to recover.

I imported old PST into the new PST and it looked like everything was there
except for the calendar.

I then used Control Panel | Mail as described in
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011124801033.aspx with the
same result. It looks like everything has been restored (views, filters,
etc. I don't think archival is turned on) except for calendar information.
I'd like to get the calendar to come back up although I think he can synch
with his Palm again.

Ideas?