Major PC FUBAR - need help

[JeffL]

Wife and daughter traveling last week, long story short, daughter was watching DVDs in car on wife's notebook, system started acting screwy and she ended up saying "yes" when system asked if she wanted to do a system restore.

Wife got home last night, booted up her PC, it acts as if it is the first boot-up, all the Gateway crap is now running again, none of her "stuff" is present. Looked in the folders and there is a folder named something like "6-22-08 backup" which appears to have her stuff. Just to test, tried running her email program (Outlook) from that folder (the pst date looks like it's the right one) but now it asks for her to enter the key code, etc. as if it is the first time running it. Same for Word.

I could not find a way to get the system to put her old folders, etc. back as the default user - nope, can't find a way. Tried a system restore, and there is now no earlier date for restore than this morning.

And of course, after two moves, I have no idea where the system CDs are to re-enter her Outlook or Word key codes are. She only uses the notebook primarily for her email (all on Outlook,) web browsing, occasional use of Word, etc. But I absolutely can't afford to be purchasing Office again just because we can't find her old system disk and keycodes.

Help! How can I get back to where she was? How do I get Outlook, Word, etc. to recognize that it's already been installed and in use for the last 3 years, etc?

[Stroker Ace]

I really have no idea if you can do anything... that's awful. Are you sure all of her old data is still in place? A little reformat never hurt anyone, and you should be able to get illicit keys for outdated MS software if you really need 'em.

http://img.alibaba.com/photo/11100639/Rep_Edvard_Munch_The_Scream_Oil_Painting_Art_Print s.jpg

[Fugitive]

The only thing I can think of would be to look and see if there are old copies of the registry hives ('software' would be the one you want), load it into the registry editor, and look for the old registration information and import it back into the current registry, as described here. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895456)

[GuildBoss]

Sounds like this (http://support.gateway.com/s/SOFTWARE/Medialess/MLXPMC0/MLXPMC0su12.shtml) is what happened. It's called a non-destructive restore and merely repairs Windows but also restores all the Gateway crap.

Was Office pre-installed? You might want to try Magic Jelly Bean (http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/) to see if can recover your key.

[JeffL]

GuildBoss, I agree, I believe that is what they did.

I'll look on her notebook and see if I can find older registry entries from which I can reinstall Office for her. Just can't afford to repurchase it for her at this point - if I could just find a way to pull her emails and contact information from her Outlook (without having to reinstall it first) I'd just convert her over to Gmail. But I don't think I can do that. ugh.

[mono]

GuildBoss, I agree, I believe that is what they did.

I'll look on her notebook and see if I can find older registry entries from which I can reinstall Office for her. Just can't afford to repurchase it for her at this point - if I could just find a way to pull her emails and contact information from her Outlook (without having to reinstall it first) I'd just convert her over to Gmail. But I don't think I can do that. ugh.

Can't vouch for this method, but as long as you keep backups of your original files, can't hurt!

-Download Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/)
-Download this Thunderbird add-in (http://obm.org/doku.php?id=projects:pst_import) allowing you to import PST files. (you'll have to use something like 7zip to gunzip and untar the add-on, then browse for the xpi file from Tbird to install it)
-Import the PST into tbird with the add in.
-Use this Gmail loader app (http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/download.htm) (GML 0.5) to upload your mail from Tbird to Gmail.
-Rock on

[JeffL]

Can't vouch for this method, but as long as you keep backups of your original files, can't hurt!

-Download Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/)
-Download this Thunderbird add-in (http://obm.org/doku.php?id=projects:pst_import) allowing you to import PST files. (you'll have to use something like 7zip to gunzip and untar the add-on, then browse for the xpi file from Tbird to install it)
-Import the PST into tbird with the add in.
-Use this Gmail loader app (http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/download.htm) (GML 0.5) to upload your mail from Tbird to Gmail.
-Rock on

Tried this, worked after some messing around on an older pst file. But when I tried to import from her most recent pst (right date, much larger) the import to Tbird says no mail found. Argh!

[JeffL]

OK, so thanks to help above, recovering the mail.

I went with the Thunderbird approach, with modifications.

I never could get the pst add-in to work - I would go to import, outlook PST, find the file, and it would come back with "no mail found to import."

So I ended up with a thought - I have Outlook on my notebook, perhaps if I moved the pst file from my wife's pc over to my pc, my outlook (which I don't use any longer other than a storage vault for years of email info) I could import the mail. That worked. Then I imported it into Thunderbird (again, the PST read did not work, so I used the import email and it found the folders from Outlook, including the folders from my wife's mail that I imported.) Staying quirky, Thunderbird let me choose which folders I wanted to import, then happily ignored my choices and imported everything. A pain, but OK, got wife's email in there.

Then uses the Gmail loader app from above. More quirks. The default smtp address for Gmail didn't work, though it took a while to figure out that was the error. Found a different one online that did. Then, using the standard mbox import for Thunderbird did not work. Dropped down to an option that said it sometime fixed problems, that worked. Now I'm in the process of importing one folder at a time. But it's importing.

Wife's not happy about having to switch to gmail (she has used outlook since she started using email, so she knows it and likes to stick with what she knows on the computer) but I think, like me, she'll be happy when she gets used to it.

Thanks for the help above.

Jeff

[mono]

Yikes. Sorry those utilities were a buggy mess. I'll be honest, I have no experience w/ them, they just purported to do what you'd need. I didn't know you had access to a working Outlook install, because yeah, Tbird is far better at importing straight from Outlook.

Glad to see you now have some path to move forward with everything.

[JeffL]

Yikes. Sorry those utilities were a buggy mess. I'll be honest, I have no experience w/ them, they just purported to do what you'd need. I didn't know you had access to a working Outlook install, because yeah, Tbird is far better at importing straight from Outlook.

Glad to see you now have some path to move forward with everything.

No apology needed, you set me in the right direction. Now my wife is just perturbed at having to learn a new email program (Gmail) - she only uses the PC for a few things, and she does NOT like change in what she has learned to use. ;)

[Aleck]

No apology needed, you set me in the right direction. Now my wife is just perturbed at having to learn a new email program (Gmail) - she only uses the PC for a few things, and she does NOT like change in what she has learned to use. ;)

Once you have all the mail uploaded to gmail, couldn't you use Outlook to download them all again (assuming you can find the Outlook serial numbers)? Might save you some wife-aggro.

[JeffL]

I'd love to, but we can't find the original disc anywhere (it's been two moves since we had it.) And apparently the restore that she did wiped the registry of the registration keys - they look empty when I search the registration.