scanpst.exe fails with Fatal Error: 80040818

[dorianstarbuck]

Running Office 2007. My .pst file is less than 1G, and is corrupted. As the
title says, scanpst.exe fails every time with Fatal Error: 80040818.

I have no backups, of course. Please assist me!

 

[K. Orland]

Did you carry your PST over from an earlier version of Outlook?

 

[dorianstarbuck]

Yes, I did. Office 2000. This was roughly a year ago.

 

[K. Orland]

Did you create a new Outlook profile when you upgraded? Did you know about
the difference between the Outlook 2003/2007 PSTs and earlier versions of
Outlook?

 

[K. Orland]

You may want to read this about the ANSI vs Unicode formats of PST (because
of the different versions of Outlook):

http://www.msoutlook.info/question/115

This may just solve your problem.

 

[dorianstarbuck]

Unfortunately, I can not access the .pst file at all. Any attempt to access
it results in the following:

An unknown error occurred, error code: 0x80040600.

And, of course, as I say above, scanpst.exe does not work, and results in
the fatal error listed in the subject line.

I am 99% sure that I never created a new file, so the file is most likely
ANSI. But the file is less than 1G--it's not even 100MB--so it doesn't seem
like it could be an oversize issue.

Thank you for your help with this!

 

[K. Orland]

Size would not be an issue here, but corruption definitely is. Are you
scanning the file while Outlook is closed?

What you might want to try is opening Outlook, empty the Deleted Items
folder, close Outlook, then try to run scanpst.exe against the PST file. Make
sure there are no instances of outlook.exe running in the processes section
of the task manager.

 

[dorianstarbuck]

Just tried that, and it didn't work. Yes, I'm making sure that Outlook is
completely closed.

I even tried copying the .pst in question to a shared folder on our network,
and running scanpst.exe from another computer on the copied file. Exactly
the same results.

As for the deleted items folder, it's empty, since I had to create a new
data file just to get Outlook to open.

I really appreciate your help with this. Any other ideas? Purchasing $300
software isn't an option; we're a nonprofit organization, and don't have the
funds for that.

 

[K. Orland]

You wouldn't happen to be keeping that PST on a mapped network drive, would
you?

 

[dorianstarbuck]

No, it's on a shared folder on the server.

You wouldn't happen to be keeping that PST on a mapped network drive, would
you?

 

[Brian Tillman]

No, it's on a shared folder on the server.

Same thing.

 

[dorianstarbuck]

Ah. Sorry. I thought she was asking if I'd mapped the folder to a drive
letter, which I haven't. But yes, the .pst file is stored on a shared folder

 

[K. Orland]

Move the PST to your local machine. Keeping a PST on a mapped network drive
or any drive not local to the PC/laptop is not supported. Outlook needs
continuous and uninterrupted read/write access to a PST. If there is the
smallest blip in connection, you end up with corruption so that's like the
source of your problems. Then start the recommended troubleshooting steps
over again.

 

[dorianstarbuck]

Ah! Okay. Thank you very much.

The .pst file still is corrupted, and is still giving me the same result
when I run scanpst.exe on it. But I have moved it to my local machine.

Now, I'd like to remove it from Outlook, so I don't have to deal with the
error message that pops up every time I run Outlook, but when I try to erase
it, I get the following message:

"You cannot delete this Outlook data file. Configuration information in the
file is being copied to your new default data file. You can delete the file
after this information is copied."

I'm assuming that it will never be copied because the file is corrupted. Is
there some way that I can fix this?

Thank you again for all of your help!

 

[K. Orland]

You can remove it using the mail applet in the control panel or simply delete
and recreate your Outlook profile (same location: mail applet). I would even
suggest a reboot after deleting the profile, before you create a new one.

 

[dorianstarbuck]

The problem with creating a new profile is that even though my old .pst file
is corrupted and I have no contacts in my address book, they all still pop up
if I start typing a name in the "to" field. If I create a brand new profile,
they won't pop up any more, and I'll really be starting from scratch. Is
there a way to export/import them?

Again, I really appreciate your help with this!

 

[K. Orland]

Are you talking about the nickname list? That's the .nk2 file.

 

[dorianstarbuck]

Where would I find that file? I've done a comprehensive search on my
computer and on the mapped network drive, and can't find any file with .nk2.

 

[K. Orland]

Not 100% sure about Outlook 2007. Are you searching hidden folders/files?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Where would I find that file? I've done a comprehensive search on my
computer and on the mapped network drive, and can't find any file
with .nk2.

Open WIndows Explorer and enter %AppData%\Microsoft\Outlook in the Address
bar. Click Go. It's apparent that you have not enabled showing hidden
files and folders.

Since the NK2 file is named the same as your mail profile, creating a new
mail profile will create a new, empty NK2 file.