Corrupt PST handling (particularly > 2GB files on the old PST format)

I had a case where I exported an old mailbox from Exchange 2003 and could not access the file I exported. The mailbox was larger than 2 GB, but Exchange 2003 could only export 2 GB. When I tried to open the PST file in Outlook, I got "the [PST file] has reached its maximum size." and I wasn't able to open the PST.

Ugh.

I used the PST crop tool and tried to use scanPST - to no avail. The crop tool worked, but scanPST would fail and say it didn't make any changes to my cropped PST file. I tried cropping various amounts and running scanpst. I used a hex editor and altered some parts of the PST as I read other places. No success.

Reading through someone else's thoughts, I was able to use exmerge to import the PST back to an Exchange mailbox. I was able to do this *without* cropping the 2 GB PST.

This was very annoying, but eventually worked using exmerge. If that failed, I would have had to use one of the many paid PST recovery options. The fact that Exchange will export a corrupt PST is absurd. Why would there not be an error if it couldn't complete the export?

creating new profile for existing user on Vista

Every now and then you want to create a new profile in Vista if the original has become corrupt or you feel it has become problematic. In XP, you just had to rename the folder with the user's name in c:\documents and settings.

With Vista, you also need to alter a registry record. You'll need to alter one of the S-15 entries from here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

One of the folders there will be for the user profile in question. You need to reboot after making the registry changes.

Word template, normal.dot, can still get corrupt

It had been a while since I had seen a corrupt normal.dot until yesterday. Word would only open in safe mode and I got this error in the application event log:

event id 1000

Faulting application winword.exe, version 11.0.8202.0, stamp 47420667, faulting module winword.exe, version 11.0.8202.0, stamp 47420667, debug? 0, fault address 0x008dd26c.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

All I did was delete the user's normal.dot and then it was fixed.

Dealing with a corrupt local XP profile

If you find that a local profile is corrupt when trying to open it and it opens a temp profile, try this.

Log in as an administrator (not the user with the problem). Go to My Computer Properties -> Advanced -> User Profile Settings and copy the profile to some folder somewhere on the computer. Then delete the corrupt profile from c:\docs and settings (including the temp profile) and then re-log on as the user with the corrupt profile. Restart the computer. Log in as an administrator and copy the copied profile to the newly created profile in c:\docs and settings.