trying to rebuild after a lightning strike

[stanley drew]

so let me start by saying that about two years ago my computer was struck by lightning. or rather lightning struck my house and my computer completely locked up. reboot got nothing. power supply would whirr for about 10 seconds and then everything would shut down. so i popped my drive into another box to see if it would boot. long story short i had to rebuild the master file table (if i remember correctly) and could then mount the drive and extract all files but could not boot from it. this persists to this day.

now my ultimate goal is to reclaim all of my old email from that drive. this is supposed to be stored in a microsoft outlook pst file. but i can find no such file anywhere and my intuition with ntfs is that i can't find it because it is hidden from me until i boot from the drive and log in as the administrator (correct me if this is way off).

if there is a way to determine whether such a file exists on my drive please let me know.

now on to the hardware part: when i attempt to boot from the drive with my newer motherboard and processor i get a blue screen with some hex codes:

windows has stopped loading to prevent damage to your drive
stop 0x0000007B (0xF7C7A640, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

a quick google search suggested that this may be due to the fact that i am booting the drive with a mb and cpu that are different from the setup in the system registry (am i wrong about this?). so that has led me to try to rebuild my old system.

my first problem: i have a power supply from an old gateway that i am trying to use on the possibly destroyed K7 261671-001 board from my old compaq. so far i cannot get the power supply to start up. should i try another supply and if so does anybody know whether this board requires any special connectors?

thanks to anyone kind enough to help me with this. i hope to learn a lot from this and future discussions.

andrew

 

[Harper]

From the sounds on it, you might be able get the data from off from that drive. You just need to plug it into a PC with a working OS. The copy what you need from it. Eg. My Docs, Favorites, email, etc. Don't bother with your windows folder.

 

[Baez]

Instead of rebuilding your whole system to the old one you can just do a Windows repair and the drive would boot fine.

It depends on what wattage the Gateway PSU is. I also wouldn't recommend that PSU as they aren't too stable.

 

[carnageX]

now my ultimate goal is to reclaim all of my old email from that drive. this is supposed to be stored in a microsoft outlook pst file. but i can find no such file anywhere and my intuition with ntfs is that i can't find it because it is hidden from me until i boot from the drive and log in as the administrator (correct me if this is way off).

if there is a way to determine whether such a file exists on my drive please let me know.

If you were using Outlook, then the emails are all stored in .dbx files. Do a search on the drive for 'Inbox.dbx' and go to that directory. All of your custom folders should be in the same directory, if you made any that is, as well.

 

[Peter.Cort]

search for .wab and .pst files.

 

[stanley drew]

From the sounds on it, you might be able get the data from off from that drive. You just need to plug it into a PC with a working OS. The copy what you need from it. Eg. My Docs, Favorites, email, etc. Don't bother with your windows folder.

yeah that was the first thing i tried way back when but i get access denied messages whenever i try to open my personal folder or any of the subfolders within documents and settings (obv an xp system). am i wrong that i would gain access to those directories if i could boot the drive??

Instead of rebuilding your whole system to the old one you can just do a Windows repair and the drive would boot fine.

It depends on what wattage the Gateway PSU is. I also wouldn't recommend that PSU as they aren't too stable.

thanks for the info on the psu.

as for the windows repair i know i tried that and ran into some sort of broblem. i booted from the operating system cd and then ran into trouble somewhere... i'll try this again later and come back with the results.

If you were using Outlook, then the emails are all stored in .dbx files. Do a search on the drive for 'Inbox.dbx' and go to that directory. All of your custom folders should be in the same directory, if you made any that is, as well.

no .dbx files

search for .wab and .pst files.

no .wab or .pst files either

can any of you tell me what to make of this access denied dialog that pops up when attempting to open subfolders within documents and settings?

 

[Baez]

Access denied comes up when you aren't logged on as an administrator. The account you're using might just be set to a regular user.

 

[carnageX]

no .dbx files

Made sure to search in hidden folders, right?

can any of you tell me what to make of this access denied dialog that pops up when attempting to open subfolders within documents and settings?

boot into safe mode > go to my computer > right click on the drive you wanna access > properties > security > add > advanced > find now > pick "administrators" > click OK > click on the Administrators entry in the top box > check all of the boxes > click advanced > owner tab > select Administrators > check "Replace owenr on subcontainers and objects > click ok > click ok > reboot

 

[DoubleHelix]

Outlook Express uses DBX files, and Outlook uses PST files. If you were using one of these applications as your e-mail client, the files are there. They're hidden, so you need to change folder settings to show all files including hidden files and folders.

If you're getting Access Denied messages trying to browse the files, you may need to take ownership of them with the new account / installation.

How to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP