IT Queries: Computer problems answered

Hi, I need to reinstall my Win XP OS to get rid of all the junk I’ve accumulated;  I’ve burnt a DVD with my documents on it, but will my emails be there as well ?  if not, how do I preserve them ?

Your emails probably won’t be in My Documents unless you’ve specifically told your system to save them there.

Finding your emails on a Windows system is particularly irritating as the different programs dump them into different folders. In Outlook Express and Windows Mail the address books are also saved in a completely different location.

The best thing is to back up your entire profile, this sits in the Documents and Settings folder on your C: drive and the profile will be either your log in name or something close to it.

By backing up this entire folder, you’ll save your My Documents folder, desktop, web browser bookmarks, address books and email. Just take care that your email folder isn’t so big it won’t fit on a single DVD.

I have a new computer running Windows 7 and I can’t figure out how to copy the addresses in Outlook Express on my old computer to the new system.

You’ll have to export the old address book into a Comma Separated Value file (.csv) on the old computer, copy the CSV file across to the new computer and then import it into Windows Live Mail. It isn’t complex, but it is a bit fiddly.

First, open Outlook Express on your old Windows XP, ME, 98 or 95 computer and choose Addresses on the tool bar as show below;

Once you are in the Windows Address Book choose File then Export and Other Address Book.

In the Address Book Export Tool, select Text File (Comma Separated Values) and click Export;

The program will then ask you where you want to save the CSV file, choose an external drive which you can plug into the new Windows 7 computer or, if both the computers are networked, a location where the Windows 7 machine can find the exported file.

Once you’ve saved the file go to the Windows 7 system and plug in the external drive if you’ve used that to save the CSV file.

In the Windows Live Mail screen, select the contacts button and show menu, then choose import and Comma Separated Values. The program will ask where the CSV file is, and you’ll need to tell it where the file has been saved.

Click continueand the import process will start. During the process, the program might ask you about field mapping, this is where the computer isn’t sure which part of the file belongs where, so you may have to tell the system which part is the email address, which part the surname, etc.

Once you’ve completed, you should find all your addresses have come across. Keep in mind if you have multiple address books or groups within the address book, you’ll have to recreate these.

My Outlook Express dissapeared after I shut down with it still open, I found a 2nd copy in control panel[that computer tech pmade when OE froze a year ago] and dragged and am using it.

BUT my files dont recognise it, I can ATT; pics to emails but I cant send a picture to be emailled, mess; Cannot start Microsoft Outlook ,requires M O Express 4.01 or greater. You can install OE by runnig IE5 setup .exe from the IES folder located on your cd or through the windows website

It sounds like your Outlook Express 5 is damaged and your computer is actually using Outlook, which is a totally different program.

To fix this, you’ll need to repair the Internet Explorer 5 installation by following our instructions on Removing Software.

When you select Internet Explorer, it will give you the choice to remove, repair or modify. Choose modify and make sure the Outlook Express is ticked in the list of installed options. If it is, cancel the modify, repeat the process and choose repair then follow the wizard through the repair process.

You should keep in mind Outlook Express and Internet Explorer 5 are extremely out of date programs and you should upgrade to the newest version your system can support. You may also want to consider buying a new computer as these problems are probably related to the age of the system.

Each time I restart my pc – old emails come back into my inbox in OE. How do I stop this?

A long standing quirk in Outlook Express and its Vista equivalent, Windows Mail, is when it thinks it hasn’t downloaded a message properly it will start downloading everything again. 

For instance, if there are a hundred messages waiting for you at your Internet provider and Outlook Express decided message 83 wasn’t received, even though it was along with the other message, it will assume all 100 messages need to be downloaded again. 

And again, and again, and again.

The only way around this is to flush the mailbox so the offending message stops messing with OE.

You can do this two ways; the first is to log onto your ISP’s webmail page and delete all the pending messages in your inbox while the other is to install Mozilla Thunderbird and download the messages there.

Of the two, the webmail option is the best as you can be sure the mailbox is cleared out.

When I send an email with an attached photograph. It doesn’t appear to leave my Outbox but arrives at its destination as many as 19 times. I have contacted our service provider, Harbour IT who took me through a series of tasks but the problem still exists. Can you help?

The likely suspect is the time your email program waits before giving up. You need to change your timeout settings.

In Outlook Express, click Tools, Accounts, highlight your email account and click the properties button.

In the account properties window, click the Advanced tab and under Server Timeouts move the slider to the extreme right, which will show the timeout as being five minutes.

Click okay, restart the computer and see if that clears the problem.

Not able to send using Reply and Forward with broadband BigPond on Outlook emails. We just get a standard reject email.

We have emailed bigpond re this issue several times and though they said they would address the issue in a general email they have not come back to us.

The reason is your email is setup to use the Optus Broadband connection. When you’re connecting through Bigpond, the Optus servers reject the attempt to go through system as they don’t know who you are.

To fix this, you have to set up Outlook Express to use the Bigpond servers.

To do this, open Outlook Express, click  Tools, Accounts, highlight Bigpond and click the Properties button.

In the properties, the servers should both be set to mail.bigpond.com, the account name should be your Bigpond email address and the password your Bigpond password. Remember my password should be ticked and nothing else should be ticked.

Click okay and close then Outlook Express should be fine.

Up-graded my PC including a new hard drive and installed Windows XP Pro and applications on it including Office.  Where should I look for the address book and how do I open it?

On Windows XP and earlier systems, Outlook Express uses the Windows Address Book. This is usually hidden deep in the user profile in a hidden folder.

First, you’ll have to change your computer settings to so you can see your hidden folders. Once you have set this, you’ll have to find the address book file which is usually hidden in c:\documents and settings\yourname\application data\microsoft\address book and finishes in the name .wab.

Keep in mind when you are importing off an old hard drive, the drive letter will not be c:

To import the old address book into the new book, open your new address book by clicking the address icon at the top of the Outlook Express screen.

In the adress book click the File menu, select import and Address Book (WAB) then navigate to the old address book locations. Highlight the address book and click Open. The wizard will then run you through the process.

Up-graded my PC including a new hard drive and installed Windows XP Pro and applications on it including Office.  The old hard drive is also in the case and while old data files on it are accessible by most applications, I can’t get the new Outlook Express to bring up my old Outlook Express files.  I can find the old email message files but can’t open them, even after copying them to the current Outlook Express folder.  I’ve not been able to find the old address book file.

Where should I look for the address book and how do I open it and my old message files?

To recover your old Outlook Express files, use the Import tool in Outlook Express, click the File menu, Import and select Messages.

Select Outlook Express 6 and click Next. In the import from OE 6 dialog box, click the Import Mail from OE 6 directory. Then select the folder containing the old Outlook Express files.

We’ll answer the Address Book question in our next IT Queries post.

For the past 3 weeks whenever I forward an email that has a GIP file on the front page it wont go. The error Number is 0x800CCC0F.

If the said email is auto forwarded thorugh the Message Rules then no problem… only when I manually forward the email that it wont go.

I have been in touch with and spent many hours with  my ISP (IINET), same with my modem maker and also with Microsoft.  Final advice is to delete OExp and use another mail program.

This problem happened at the same time on my PC, My laptop and my husbands laptop. I use Outlook express 6 and Int Explor. V7 on my laptop.  My husband has Int Expl V7 and Windows Web mail on his laptop.

None of these computer can now send Gif files if they are on the front page. (Attachments are OK)
I have bought and changed to a new modem.. Dlink. I removed my antivirus for 4 days (AVG) I haveswitched off firewalls.  I have spent hours fiddling with settings.

The only things that all computers have in common is that we use IINET yet they say that there is no way they can have anything to do with this problem.

The other thing that all computers have in common is that about 3 – 4 weeks ago we did a Registry cleanup … using the free CCleaner.  Have spoken to a computer wiz and he assures me that that could not have caused this.

I am not totally convinced that the Reg Cleaner hasnt caused a problem but I just dont know.

Hope you can help.

The 0x800CCC0F error message means something is interrupting the connection with your mail server.

Microsoft have a number of Outlook Express troubleshooting tips on their website including disabling firewalls and checking your mail server settings. It sounds like you’ve already covered those with your ISP.

It sounds like this could be an MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) problem. The Internet works on breaking down information into little parcels and the MTU is the biggest packet your computer will send.

The easiest way to reduce the MTU on a Windows machine is to use the free DrTCP program from DSL Reports. There are detailed instructions on using DrTCP on the DSLReports website.

A trap with DrTCP is you need to select the correct network adaptor that you are using to access the net. Once you’ve chosen the right connection, you’ll need to reduce the MaxMTU to a lower setting, say 1450. 

Reboot your computer and check that everything works, as you may find changing the setting could affect other applications.

Changing settings like this can cause problems and is best done by a qualified computer technician so you may want to contact your local computer tech to help you.

Is it possible to read an incoming e-mail in Outlook Express without opening it? (I used to be able to do this with Eudora). At the moment if I place the cursor over an incoming mail and click once, the text appears in the window below, but the envelope icon opens to denote that it has been read. If I double click, the e-mail opens in full.

Outlook Express’ default setting is to mark an email as read if you preview it for more than a few seconds. 

To fix this, click Tools, Options and click the Read tab.

Take the tick off first option, Mark message read after displaying for x seconds, click Okay and the problem will be fixed.