Outlook data has disappeared

[dunnee]

My homepage had been hijacked. I ran ad aware and spybot and this solved my
immediate problem. The next time I booted up all outlook data from contacts
to historical email was missing. I don't have a clue what to do. I would
rather not attempt a system restore for fear of being hijacked again. Any
ideas out there.

Thanx for any help

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

My homepage had been hijacked. I ran ad aware and spybot and this
solved my immediate problem. The next time I booted up all outlook
data from contacts to historical email was missing. I don't have a
clue what to do. I would rather not attempt a system restore for
fear of being hijacked again. Any ideas out there.

Thanx for any help

I've never seen AdAware or Spybot do anything to Outlook data. Have you
searched your hard drive for *.pst (include hidden/system folders) ?

Note - you should do regular backups of all your data. Most of it is
probably in My Documents. My general course of action on a standalone/home
computer is to redirect My Documents on the desktop to something you set up
yourself, such as c:\data (right-click on My Documents on the desktop, go to
properties, choose target, point it at c:\data, and choose 'move' when
prompted), and put the PST file in c:\data\outlook, and name it
yourname.pst. You can point Outlook at the new location/name when you
re-open it.
I don't like using the default profile folders as you may have problems with
them if your profile gets hosed, and it's easier to back up a single folder
than various folders on your hard drive. Hope this helps.