Retrieve MS Outlook account info from slaved drive

[glricht]

Working on a PC (Win XP Home) where the MB has gone bad. The customer is going to get a new PC, but wants his data. No problem, slaved the HD, ran Fabs, plus copied some other folders and we're good to go.

Here's the rub: the customer uses MS Outlook 2003 but has no idea what the account settings are. He knows his email address (obviously) and is pretty sure of the password, but knows nothing of any of the server settings.

The registry on the slaved drive is accessible, but I don't where MS Outlook stores the account info. Have done a ton of Google searches, but no real answers that I could find.

Anybody run into this before?

I have a couple of MS Office backup/restore pgms that I use all the time, but they only handle MS Outlook on the running system, not via an external registry.

 

[Avgsmoe]

The fabs I use does get the account info for outlook... It's the fabs4tech. Or you can try making the old drive bootable on the new. Should only take 5 minutes.

 

[MobileTechie]

I believe that it's stored in the relevant user's hive in Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Outlook

However, by the look of it, it's not in plain text so the best you can do, unless you know how to decode it, is to export and then restore the key.

 

[activeits]

Visit www.nirsoft.net and look for mail pass, you can tell it which folder to look in.


Thanks

 

[glricht]

Visit www.nirsoft.net and look for mail pass, you can tell it which folder to look in.

I've used that tool many times and it's great, but it's for passwords, not for account info. Also, it allows you to specify the folder for Thunderfird, Netscape and Eudora, but not for Outlook.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[glricht]

I believe that it's stored in the relevant user's hive in Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Outlook

However, by the look of it, it's not in plain text so the best you can do, unless you know how to decode it, is to export and then restore the key.

Thanks. I may have to do just that as I've been striking out looking for a way to show the info.

 

[MobileTechie]

I've used that tool many times and it's great, but it's for passwords, not for account info. Also, it allows you to specify the folder for Thunderfird, Netscape and Eudora, but not for Outlook.

Thanks for the suggestion.

What do you mean by "account info" then? Because nirsoft gives more than just passwords.

 

[lciavarella]

I’m not 100% positive, but If you can get the .pst file out of:

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

When you install Outlook on the new PC you can import that pst file into Outlook and I believe the settings come along with all the data. Like I said, I’m not 100 % positive because it has been a while since I’ve did it.

lciavarella

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

I’m not 100% positive, but If you can get the .pst file out of:

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

When you install Outlook on the new PC you can import that pst file into Outlook and I believe the settings come along with all the data. Like I said, I’m not 100 % positive because it has been a while since I’ve did it.

lciavarella

unfortunately not, the PST holds everything except the account info

 

[Fixedathome.com]

What do you mean by "account info" then? Because nirsoft gives more than just passwords.

Yep agreed. Nirsoft gives you pretty much everything you need to set the account back up again.

 

[gazza]

Try this, works for me!

http://www.stellarinfo.com/outlook-pst-file-recovery.htm

 

[Fixedathome.com]

Try this, works for me!

http://www.stellarinfo.com/outlook-pst-file-recovery.htm

That looks like a pst repair tool. The op was after retrieving account settings.

 

[glricht]

What do you mean by "account info" then? Because nirsoft gives more than just passwords.

Guess I was getting blurry-eyed and fuzzy-brained working on this. You're right of course, MailPass View shows what I'm looking for.

Now to figure how to have it look at the registry of the slaved drive for Outlook. (You can access a slaved drive for some email clients, but not for Outlook - at least that I can find.)

 

[Keegan]

Guess I was getting blurry-eyed and fuzzy-brained working on this. You're right of course, MailPass View shows what I'm looking for.

Now to figure how to have it look at the registry of the slaved drive for Outlook. (You can access a slaved drive for some email clients, but not for Outlook - at least that I can find.)

mailpass only gets outlook info from the system you run it on.
So how you can use it on this case beats me.
But keep us informed if you crack this one

 

[Markus]

What I usually do is load the user hive, export the outlook profile to a reg file, change the paths in the keys, and then import on the new PC.
Look for the key MobileTechie mentioned.

That or just copy the profile to the new PC and use reprofiler.
Good luck getting it taken care of.

 

[Appleby]

I've run into this in the past also and in the end, I've found it's easier to call the ISP, hosting company, employer, university etc and get the account info/settings from them and reset the password if need be. It's a real pain but it's not near the time killer that trying to find a way to hack into the old files and retrieve the data, which I've yet to actually been able to do.

It's the customer's responsibility to know their password even though most do not. We've all heard it a 100 times...."Um...I don't have a password for my email??" Uh, ya you do! When I get to this point I do what is fastest, easiest and most cost effective for the customer, which is usually picking up the phone and calling the email host/provider.

 

[glricht]

Resolution of the problem

OK, I've got the customer up and running on both of his two email addresses in Outlook (yea!). Here's what was done:

I used Fabs 4 (the newest one) to save the customer's data (including Outlook) off the slaved drive. Using a test machine with XP, I did a Fabs 4 restore of just the Outlook data. Then went into the MAIL control panel applet and all the server account settings were there, except the passwords. Fortunately, the customer DID know his passwords, so I was basically home free. Whew! (If he hadn't known the passwords, then it was time to contact the ISPs and get the server info, plus reset his passwords - a time consuming effort.)

FYI, a couple of other misc items:

1. I sent a note to Nir, author of Mail PassView asking about using a slaved drive and he replied that it won't do it. It's on his request list, but it will be tough as Outlook encrypts the passwords using the password of the owner on the slaved PC.

2. The only way I could find to get the server account info was to do a Fabs 4 restore to a test machine, no other tool I could find would do it. You can see the account info file in the Fabs 4 user archive folder, but it's not in plain text.

3. Ran into an "gotcha" using Fabs 4 restore. On the slaved drive, the user's name was "John Doe", so Fabs pulled the PSTs from the default location in John Doe's account folder. However, on the new PC, the user's name was "OWNER" and that's what I was logged on as, so I expected Fabs 4 to restore the PSTs to the OWNER account folder, but it didn't. Instead, the PSTs were placed into the account folder for John Doe, even though no John Doe user had been created! Morever, when using the MAIL control panel applet, the data files for the Outlook profile were listed as being in the John Doe account folder! I ended up adding/deleting PST files in the Outlook profile to get things back to normal.

Next time, once I know the account server info from the slaved drive, I'll setup the new PC's Outlook profile and copy the PSTs by hand.

Oh well, it was a learning experience and the customer is happy! Hope this is of some help to others that face a similar situation.

 

[paristotle]

At the risk of sounding dumb what settings were you looking for? If you have the account name (usually the email address itself), and the password then all you need are the server addresses right? That should be easy enough using nslookup no?

 

[glricht]

At the risk of sounding dumb what settings were you looking for? If you have the account name (usually the email address itself), and the password then all you need are the server addresses right? That should be easy enough using nslookup no?

How would NSLOOKUP help to determine for a given email address: the email server addresses (it's not always in the same domain), protocol type (POP3/SMTP, IMAP, Exchange), port numbers, userIDs/passwords for each (they're not necessarily the same), SSL or not, etc, etc, etc.

What was needed was mentioned in the opening post of this thread.

 

[dk99]

In xp just go Into the user account then local settings / appdata /microsoft / office/ outlook copy outlook pst to flash drive and after office is installed on the new computer just transfer outlook pst into the app data sub folder outlook.
set up the account with customers email and password. you will need to find out if his email account uses pop3 ect.