Restoring Outlook from .pst file?

Question

Can I completely restore my Outlook (address book, calendar, inbox, etc) from the outlook.pst file. My computer went down completely, after numerous spontaneous resets and a failed attempt to restore windows xp from the disk I got a blue screen Stop Error regarding a ntfs.sys error.

If I can get the outlook.pst file off of this drive will it completely restore my Outlook?

Also I was told because I had an ntfs.sys error, if I take any files off of this drive I can transfer the broken computers' problem onto the new computer. Is this true?

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

If you copy the PST file out of your personal folder, you can copy it back into another personal folder on another installation. When you load Outlook afterwards, you will see all the contents of that folder - contacts, inbox, tasks etc.

Moving data files off the old machine will NOT transfer any other errors to the new drive. The errors are in the operating and file susytem files. Data doesn't just carry corruption arounfd with it wherever it goes. If you can get the file off and it's not corrupted, it won't be corrupted when it goes back on the new drive.

Answer 2

If you can recover the archived .pst file, then yes it should restore  the majority of your emails, if not all of them.

As far as what you were told about "transferring the problem" this is possible, but only if the .pst file is corrupted, infected with a virus, or caused the problem in the first place, this should not be an issue