Need HELP on transferring OE e-mails from a dead computer

[Blanketboy]

Hope I'm posting in the right forum category here. Here's my problem and thanks to all who care to help. My computer that ran Vista crashed. I have bought a new computer running Windows 7. I had Outlook Express on the old computer....Live Mail on the new one. Having my old individual e-mails are very important to me...there are thousands of them received and sent over a period of a few years

A tech guy has taken my old hard drive out of my old tower and is extracting data from it, but says the OE files are going to be a problem and/or very time-consuming if he can even extract them at all.

Is he correct in what he's saying? If not, I would really appreciate any recommendations. Thanks to everyone in advance - the advice I've gotten here is fantastic and much appreciated by those of us who are clueless when it comes to tech.

Also, are OE e-mails compatible with Live Mail or would they go into a separate folder?

 

[Schroff87]

I guess you mean your hard drive failed. If the actual platters of the drive haven't been harmed and the contents of your emails weren't located in bad sectors it shouldn't be too much of a problem. It is difficult to say from here because drives can fail for many reasons each with their own level of damage to data, if any. Did you hear loud clicking from the computer and blue screens of death before your computer failed?

OE mails should be compatible w/ Live, detailed guides are easily available by searching. I would recommend against Live Mail as it is nothing but trouble... consider using Mozilla Thunderbird.

 

[Blanketboy]

I guess you mean your hard drive failed. If the actual platters of the drive haven't been harmed and the contents of your emails weren't located in bad sectors it shouldn't be too much of a problem. It is difficult to say from here because drives can fail for many reasons each with their own level of damage to data, if any. Did you hear loud clicking from the computer and blue screens of death before your computer failed?

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. My hard drive is apparently fine. I couldn't get Vista to boot even with a recovery disc and it was an old computer that needed to be replaced, anyway. I'm not sure I understand what the tech guy is saying because I'm not computer savvy at all, but what I think he's saying is that there's no easy fast way he knows to extract thousands of individual e-mails from the old hard drive which he's removed from the old tower. He said if the old computer was running properly it'd be an easy transfer to the new computer, but from a dead computer is another story. He's telling me it'll take hours and hours to do it if he can do it at all.

Your thoughts? I've had a lot of views of my post, but only one reply. I could really use some help here and appreciate any time you can spare to address my problem. Thanks!!

 

[Schroff87]

If your hard drive is fine then it's not difficult to recover your data. Personally (assuming it's the only computer available on site), I would have downloaded a "Live CD" version of Ubuntu , booted your machine from the CD and accessed your Vista installation & copied off the folder to a thumb drive, formatted the hard drive and installed Vista or 7.

Another way is to install Vista/7 again and during installation, let it store the entire old installation in a Windows.old folder, from which you can copy the relevant files into the fresh installation.

Hope I gave you some insight but do ask him very specific questions and ensure you get direct answers and not generic things some techies say to people who do not know much about the technical aspect of computers.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Take a look here for Microsoft's opinion:

Outlook Express to Windows 7 Live Mail - Microsoft Answers

I don't know how accurate that solution is because I gave up on Live Mail and went to Thunderbird.

Your OE mail is stored in a series of files with a DBX extension. If your tech guy can't figure it out, you should take possession of your old hard drive and do it yourself. Mail transfers can be frustrating, but as long as your old hard drive is intact, you should be able to get it done one way or another. Pound on Google for info on transferring OE DBX files to your new email program.