Office/.pst problem

lansens · Post by **lansens** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 5:39 pm

C:/PROGRA~/MACROS~2/OFFICE/OUTLOOK.EXE

The above error is the result or cause of a missing .pst file from Outlook. I have searched the error via google and MS knowledge base and come up empty handed. I recall seeing this error in the past but cannot for the life of me remember what it is. Any ideas?

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 6:31 pm

Question: Do you know where the PST is located?

Brk · Post by **Brk** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 6:44 pm

Is it in the wrong directory?

MACROS~2?

lansens · Post by **lansens** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 6:48 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:Question: Do you know where the PST is located?

Good question, the answer is no. Well, I know where is should be but the damn thing is gone or has been replaced. It seems to me that the proud owner of this laptop has been playing with things he should not. Of course he will not admit to it. I have found a few things close to this error but nothing definite. He has installed AOL and I have a feeling it has something to do with it. Have you heard of an AOL program that replaces the .pst file?

lansens · Post by **lansens** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 6:49 pm

Burke wrote:Is it in the wrong directory?

MACROS~2?

A search comes up with nothing. See above post.

Brk · Post by **Brk** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 6:51 pm

lansens wrote:Good question, the answer is no. Well, I know where is should be but the damn thing is gone or has been replaced. It seems to me that the proud owner of this laptop has been playing with things he should not. Of course he will not admit to it. I have found a few things close to this error but nothing definite. He has installed AOL and I have a feeling it has something to do with it. Have you heard of an AOL program that replaces the .pst file?

Maybe if he set AOL to be the default mail application it might've overwritten or outright deleted it.

lansens · Post by **lansens** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 6:55 pm

Burke wrote:Maybe if he set AOL to be the default mail application it might've overwritten or outright deleted it.

I think that may be the case.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 7:55 pm

I've not seen AOL hose a .PST file, regardless of default or not default e-mail proggy.

/MACROS~2 hmmm...that a typo? Would expect C:/PROGRA~1/MICROS~1/OFFICE10/OUTLOOK.EXE or something like that.

Have you done a search for *.PST?

Can you right click the Office shortcut on your desktop and select properties, you'll see your mail services there. Not a home made shortcut...but the default full icon MS Office installs. If not, then your control panel, them Mail. Check the properties for your Personal Folders.

lansens · Post by **lansens** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 8:40 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:I've not seen AOL hose a .PST file, regardless of default or not default e-mail proggy.

/MACROS~2 hmmm...that a typo? Would expect C:/PROGRA~1/MICROS~1/OFFICE10/OUTLOOK.EXE or something like that.

Have you done a search for *.PST?

Can you right click the Office shortcut on your desktop and select properties, you'll see your mail services there. Not a home made shortcut...but the default full icon MS Office installs. If not, then your control panel, them Mail. Check the properties for your Personal Folders.

Nope, no typo. I'm very confused. I don't have the lappy at home with me. I will have more access to it in the morning. I will do a more thorough search tomorrow.

lansens · Post by **lansens** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 12:09 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:I've not seen AOL hose a .PST file, regardless of default or not default e-mail proggy.

/MACROS~2 hmmm...that a typo? Would expect C:/PROGRA~1/MICROS~1/OFFICE10/OUTLOOK.EXE or something like that.

Have you done a search for *.PST?

Can you right click the Office shortcut on your desktop and select properties, you'll see your mail services there. Not a home made shortcut...but the default full icon MS Office installs. If not, then your control panel, them Mail. Check the properties for your Personal Folders.

You are right, I did typo the Micros~2. Any ideas from that? Turns out the .pst is not gone after all. Just simply hosed. Nothing at all in it. I'm starting to wonder if it was caused by a hardware failure.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 12:47 pm

lansens wrote:You are right, I did typo the Micros~2. Any ideas from that? Turns out the .pst is not gone after all. Just simply hosed. Nothing at all in it. I'm starting to wonder if it was caused by a hardware failure.

Hosed PST? There's a utility Office installs, called "SCANPST.EXE"

Do a search for it on your hard drive, run it. Easy to follow.

koldchillah · Post by **koldchillah** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 12:50 am

After running scanpst.exe and repairing the .pst, you should also run "detect & repair" under the help menu for any of the Office programs.. This will check your entire MS Office installation for other inconsistencies as well. Also, make sure you're all up to date on your Office Updates which can easily be searched for by following a link at the normal windows update site.

.PST's files fragment constantly, and the larger they get, the more of a menace they can be. I had to correct one this morning that was having minor inconsistencies at 1GB in size.. A .pst file will crash if it reaches 2GB and most of the time problems arise a lot sooner than that.. Make sure archiving is setup to keep the .pst file size down to a healthier level. An enormous .pst file that sees a lot of heavy usage can be a hard drive's worst nightmare over time.

lansens · Post by **lansens** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 6:35 am

Thank you all for your help. I will contimue searching for the cause of this. I will follow the advice given to try and fix the problem. Thanks again.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 6:38 am

KoldChillah..you read MS increased the size limitation of PST's with Office 2003 now? It used to be 2 gigs...now it's something triple digits in the terra size.....insane! Who would have a PST that big? I think it's out of control if they get past 1 gig...time for some end user training!

koldchillah · Post by **koldchillah** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 10:41 am

YeOldeStonecat wrote:KoldChillah..you read MS increased the size limitation of PST's with Office 2003 now? It used to be 2 gigs...now it's something triple digits in the terra size.....insane! Who would have a PST that big? I think it's out of control if they get past 1 gig...time for some end user training!

Actually, I haven't messed with Office 2003 just yet, but thats interesting.. I'm not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing.. The bigger they get, the more fragmented space goes on the drive.

I've got a whole building worth of Office XP & 2000 that keeps me busy.. I pretty much taught most users how to keep the .pst issues away, but a few of them send/receive nothing but hundreds of small jpeg's and office docs all day long and even with a good archiving practice, the .pst's can jump up and down quite a bit throughout the work week, all while wreaking havoc on the ageing drives..

I've been pushing the bosses to hook me up with the ability to provide reliable remote .pst storage or an Exchange server for quite some time but its just not in the company budget at the moment; especially since they just hooked me up with a couple of Dell 1750's to replace the existing DC's I've got running.

In the meantime, I've got a decent handle on who to keep watch over, so really the .pst file sizes haven't been too much an issue lately, but man, when I first arrived at this job, there were probably 20 or so .pst's that I eventually had to run through the truncation tool b/c they were at the 2GB barrier. It was ridiculous.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 12:12 pm

koldchillah wrote:I'm not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing.. The bigger they get, the more fragmented space goes on the drive. .

Bad thing for me. Adding to the above,
1) Backup nightmare
2) Most of the growing networks which are getting near the point of having an Exchange server, but can't swing it yet...they'll try to keep the PST's on a network server, like users folders, for the purpose of backing up. Adding to the backup load, getting files that huge manipulated over the network is a huge burden on the network, not to mention makes Outlook a pokey pig from the endusers perspective.

lansens · Post by **lansens** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 12:35 pm

At my previos job we had limits set for each mail box on the Exchange Server. Here there are no limits and I do not have the power to implement them. Limiting the accounts saves a lot of back up headaches.