Author Topic: Outlook 2003 - PST file corruption. Is it X1 ? (Read 37,513 times)

Carol Haynes · « **on:** October 07, 2006, 12:22 AM »

I had X1 desktop search running on my system without problems with Outlook XP. Recently I got the opportunity to upgrade to Outlook 2003 and ever since I have found my PST files are getting errors (I am paranoid about PST files and often run the Inbox repair tool to ensure all is well).

Since removing X1 the errors seem to have stopped but I don't want to point the finger too harshly in case there is something else in my system causing the problems (I have a lot of Outlook plugins which may have interacted badly with X1 for some reason).

The problem is there is no way of knowing how much data is lost when the file is fixed by ScanPST.EXE

Anyone else experience anything like this?

Darwin · « **Reply #1 on:** October 07, 2006, 03:23 AM »

Outlook 2003 and X1 have been rock solid together since... whenever X1 went freeware (at least in the desktop version). That was no later than June (I think) so I've had 4 1/2 months of troublefree use. I'm running WinXP Pro Sp-2 and also have SpamBayes, SnagIt8, PDFConverter, Shutdown Add-in, and eAnnouncer running with Outlook.

Hope this helps.

Mike

PS I *did* have an issue with the previous couple of builds of X1 displaying a mosaic of Italian and English labels but this has been fixed in the latest build!

patteo · « **Reply #2 on:** October 07, 2006, 03:27 AM »

I have been running X1 for quite a long time, (even before they teamed up with Yahoo) together with Outlook 2003.

Never had a problem with PST file corruption.

But nowadays, ever since I converted to Gmail, I rarely use Outlook 2003, except to enter a few names every now and then to update the contacts.

Initially, I was diligent in downloading my gmail into Outlook 2003 as a backup and I would then use X1 to index it.
But admitedly, I have been less than diligent using Outlook 2003 to backup my gmail over the last few months. But I do continue to use X1 (Enterprise version - now free) without experiencing problems.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #3 on:** October 07, 2006, 09:44 AM »

Thanks for the feedback - must be an unusual interaction on my system because since I uninstalled X1 I haven't had any corruptions at all whereas before everytime I closed Outlook I was finding my file was corrupt.

Out of curiosity have both of you actually run ScanPST.EXE on your Outlook database - or are you assuming no corruption because there are no messages? Outlook is really crap at informing users that there is a problem - it will happily open totally stuffed up PST files and continue to use them. I don't understand why there isn't some data integrity built in to Outlook rather than having to second guess the problem by running a separate and little known (also elusive) tool !

kimmchii · « **Reply #4 on:** October 07, 2006, 09:54 AM »

similar error?
http://forums.x1.com/viewtopic.php?t=2522&view=next&sid=e1820fb42cef37c0673ed89750ddc599

patteo · « **Reply #5 on:** October 07, 2006, 10:01 AM »

Quote from: Carol Haynes on October 07, 2006, 09:44 AM

Out of curiosity have both of you actually run ScanPST.EXE on your Outlook database - or are you assuming no corruption because there are no messages? Outlook is really crap at informing users that there is a problem - it will happily open totally stuffed up PST files and continue to use them. I don't understand why there isn't some data integrity built in to Outlook rather than having to second guess the problem by running a separate and little known (also elusive) tool !

Good question. No, I'm assuming no corruption simply because there are no messages. Looking at it another way, I have had no trouble accessing my Outlook data in any case.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #6 on:** October 07, 2006, 10:14 AM »

Could you try running ScanPST.EXE and see what happens? (It backs up you existing data before doing any corrections)

You should find the utility here:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033\SCANPST.EXE

You can find the location of your PST file (if you don't knwo where it is!) by opening Outlook and going to File > Data File Management which gives a list of all the open PST files and their locations.

patteo · « **Reply #7 on:** October 07, 2006, 12:53 PM »

Yikes !

Innocence lost !

Ignorance is bliss as they say.

Yes, there were problems that need to be repaired.

But I'm not sure you can point the finger at X1 since this is the 1st time I ever run the Scanpst.

What can you and I conclude.

I did the repair anyway. But I won't know what if anything was lost.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #8 on:** October 07, 2006, 01:09 PM »

Oh dear - sorry to hear that! Hope you didn't lose too much. If you did the repair you will find a copy of your old file (renamed to .BAK) in the same folder as your PST file. There will also be a log file to tell you a bit about the problems that were encountered.

Another experiment .... do another scan after downloading your email or deleting some spam etc. and see what happens.

If it is corrupted again try disabling X1 (remove it from Windows startup sp that it doesn't index or remove the Outlook indexing in the X1 settings) and then try again.

I had lots of errors with my PST files and they stopped completely when I removed X1 - strangely I didn't seem to have these problems with Outlook 2002 (XP) and X1.

Darwin · « **Reply #9 on:** October 07, 2006, 01:36 PM »

I haven't run scanpst.exe in ages - I'll do it an report back here.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #10 on:** October 07, 2006, 01:37 PM »

PS: I have posted a potential bug report to X1 and also added a poll to their support forum to see if anyone else is experiencing these problems.

Darwin · « **Reply #11 on:** October 07, 2006, 01:56 PM »

My main pst file is being repaired as I write this

I'm really not happy as I have become quite dependant on YDS/X1. Carol, did you have the same problem with YDS? I wonder if turning off X1's real time scanning of Outlook would remedy this?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #12 on:** October 07, 2006, 03:04 PM »

I haven't used YDS for a long time so I don't remember.

The big issue for me is why is X1 modifying files? Surely it should only have them open in read-only mode? It may be that Outlook wants full control of its PST files and other utilities scanning causes problems.

Personally I am giving up on Desktop Search tools - everything I have tried has some issues or annoying quirks.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #13 on:** October 07, 2006, 05:48 PM »

Can I suggest if you are experiencing problems you go and add your 2p worth on the X1 forum.

Here is the thread I started over there:

http://forums.x1.com/viewtopic.php?p=7726

JavaJones · « **Reply #14 on:** October 07, 2006, 08:25 PM »

Hmm, well I never had X1 on my Outlook system, but after an hour or so of scanning my 2.1GB .pst and 100,000 messages it says I have errors. So now begins the repair process. I just wish it would tell you what gets lost.

- Oshyan

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #15 on:** October 07, 2006, 08:52 PM »

The problem with ScanPST is that it simply truncates the PST file at the first error (as far as I can tell). So there is a big potential to lose emails.

Rather than using ScanPST initially try copying all your emails to a new PST file. (Create a new PST file from the File menu and then copy the folders from the Personal Folders tree).

If you have already used ScanPST you can check the file size before and after to estimate how much data has been lost in the repair. (The original is still there as a .BAK file). You can try and recover manually as above by closing Outlook and renaming the backup to a new name with a PST extension and then restart Outlook and use File > Open to load the original PST file as an extra set of folders).

Here are a few useful articles ...

http://www.slipstick.com/problems/scanpst.htm
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010563001033.aspx

and some other options ... (not tried them though ... beware)

http://www.oemailrecovery.com/repair-pst.html
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/pst-file-repair.html
http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid43_gci1065241,00.html

JavaJones · « **Reply #16 on:** October 07, 2006, 10:29 PM »

Actually scanpst *increased* the size of the file, lol. It also produces a log which shows some stuff which may be enlightening as to what it's doing. I don't think it just truncates though. At least I hope not. That's terrible.

Code

Microsoft (R) Inbox Repair Tool
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1995-1996. All rights reserved.

**Beginning NDB recovery

  **Attempting to open database

  **Attempting to validate header

  **Attempting to validate AMap

  **Attempting to validate BBT

  **Attempting to validate NBT

  **Attempting to validate BBT refcounts

    ??BBT entry (6A6D28) has different refcount in RBT (3 vs 2)
    ??BBT entry (10BAE9C) has different refcount in RBT (3 vs 2)
    ??BBT entry (10BAFC8) has different refcount in RBT (3 vs 2)
    ??BBT entry (10E94C4) has different refcount in RBT (3 vs 2)
    ??BBT entry (10EE17C) has different refcount in RBT (3 vs 2)
    ??Couldn't find BBT entry in the RBT (22782B4)
    ??Couldn't find BBT entry in the RBT (22EE81C)
    ??Couldn't find BBT entry in the RBT (22EEF40)
    ??Couldn't find BBT entry in the RBT (22EEF46)

  **Attempting to validate header NID high-water marks

**Beginning PST/OST recovery

  **Attempting to recover all top-level objects

      !!Folder invalid high-water-mark (nidi=6606, nidiHigh=A97D)

      !!Search folder invalid high-water-mark (nidi=9032, nidiHigh=B600)

  **Attempting to walk all folders

      !!Hierarchy Table for 122, row doesn't match sub-object:
        irow = 0, RowID = 2223

  **Attempting to locate any orphaned folders/messages

  **Attempting to check top-level objects for consistency

      ??Deleting SDO

  **Updating folder hierarchy

**Attempting to fix original file

  **Attempting to copy back BBT

  **Attempting to copy back NBT

- Oshyan

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #17 on:** October 08, 2006, 12:26 AM »

It might help if there was some explanation of BBT, RBT and DDO - what is that supposed to tell a user ...

I almost never look at the log (even if there was a problem) 'cos it makes no sense to the general user - and there is no point asking MS for support.

I presume the PST file structure is a basic database type structure with variable record contents (depending on whether the record is an email, calendar entry etc).

I can't for the life of me understand why the files seem to be so prone to corruption without the host software even noticing!

By the way PST files over 2Gb are not recommended because they get corrupted - this certainly was a problem. I'm not sure if it is fixed in Outlook 2003. If you have over 2Gb of data in your file it must take Outlook an age to load up and searching for anything (without X1) must be horrendously slow!

JavaJones · « **Reply #18 on:** October 08, 2006, 12:34 AM »

Quote

I can't for the life of me understand why the files seem to be so prone to corruption without the host software even noticing!

lol, yeah I've wondered this for some time now as well.

Interestingly I re-scanned both the original .bak file and the fixed one, and it turns out the only change made was actually *increasing* the number of known messages by 1. So it actually recovered one message. My lord, it actually worked for its intended purpose!

- Oshyan

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #19 on:** October 08, 2006, 08:42 AM »

Shock and Awe !

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #20 on:** October 08, 2006, 06:28 PM »

Re. >2Gb PST files see ...

http://www.slipstick.com/problems/repair2gbpst.htm

Interesting article about bogus error messages 'by design' http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=817966

JavaJones · « **Reply #21 on:** October 09, 2006, 10:31 PM »

Funny, my file is over 2GB and seems to be working fine.

But that does make me want to trim it down more just in case.

Actually I've been planning to switch mail clients forever but I just can't find one that I like as much, lol. Quite frankly I think Thunderbird is a bit of a joke as an alternative with all its bizarre flaws. Standard advice is to not use the default profile because it can cause corruption and data loss. The default profile is broken for god's sake! Come on Mozilla, that's shoddy.

- Oshyan

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #22 on:** October 10, 2006, 10:00 PM »

Yes I was looking for an alternative client but they all have their drawbacks and I like some of the extra features in Outlook which I use a lot (Calendar, Tasks etc).

JavaJones · « **Reply #23 on:** October 11, 2006, 04:58 AM »

Yeah, I use tasks a lot in Outlook. There are other apps for it of course, I just haven't found a lightweight one I like enough to replace the Outlook functionality while at the same time also finding an alternative email client.

- Oshyan

Dirhael · « **Reply #24 on:** October 10, 2006, 09:20 PM »

Hello everyone, first-time poster here. Was just browsing this forum after being introduced to the excellent Find And Run Robot. Anyway, just wanted to add a little to the discussion regarding Outlook .pst files. Yes, they should theoretically work up to 2 GB, but after having worked with tech. support for the last 4 years (done with it now though), I would recommend anyone to create a new one every ~200 MB. I don't really care what Microsoft or anyone says, data corruption is quite common with files larger than that (200MB). Also, even if that weren't the case, if something should happen, it's a lot better to just loose 200 MB worth of data instead of 10 times that

Oh and before I forget, there's another useful tool included with Outlook in addition to the scanpst.exe one; scanost.exe does pretty much the same, but for the "offline cache" files. If those files becomes corrupted, Outlook will start behaving badly no matter the state of your .pst files.