My hard drive crashed and I have lost a bunch of email and address book contacts that were not backed up. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate on a Quad-core machine with 8G of RAM. I am running Microsoft Office 2003 and I need to retrieve my email and contacts from Outlook.
My hard drive is not completely dead. I can try to boot from it, however, it immediately goes into Repair System mode. I have tried numerous times to do a System Restore, but it never succeeds. I continually get the message that "Windows cannot repair this disk automatically". I have tried to boot from the DVD and repair the damaged files, but it just goes into the same Repair System mode, and I get the same message. I also received the following-
Problem Signature:
Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline
Problem Signature 01: 6.1.7600.16385
" 02: 6.1.7600.16385
" 03: unknown
" 04: 21200766
" 05: AutoFailover
" 06: 25
" 07: NoBootFailure
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
I also ran chkdsk /R from the command prompt, but it did not fix any boot problems.
I can, however, connect the hard drive as a second drive in the unit (after installing Windows 7 Ultimate on another hard drive) and connect to it and read the data on the drive. I have been able to retrieve all of my data (files, pictures, music, videos, etc.) except for the Outlook data. When I click on Outlook on the damaged drive, I get a message about installing the program. Of course, the program is already installed- I just want to access it and retrieve data.
How can I retrieve my emails and contact information from Outlook? Is there a way to repair the boot files (boot.ini) or Registry to enalbe the hard drive to boot up Windows? I am very appreciative of any help I can get.