How to find my old saved e-mails after installing W7 over Vista?

[audioman]

Hi all.

I was previously using W-Vista. I backed up my entire contents of hard drive before installing a fresh copy of W7 and all of this appears in a file called " windows.old " on a separate hard drive external. I can all the old find pictures, documents and stuff no problem, but want to find all my saved e-mails, as there was quite a few, but I don't know exactly WHAT file to click on to find them in my windows.old. Perhaps e-mails simply do not save when you back up, I don't know, but if anyone can tell me the file name I shoild be looking for, I would like to import them back into my new W-Live program as saved e-mails again. Hoping it's not too late...

Can anyone help?

thanks, A-man

[mikeL]

What email program do you use, Outlook, Outlook Express, thunderbird, etc.

[audioman]

Hi.

I formerly used the ancient Outlook Express, and within it, I created several new folder files for certain types of information. My friend who did the install said they would all stil be there under the " windows.old " foder that was backed up, and I am sure they are....somewhere, it's just I cannot find them as there are so many files backed up, where the heck do i start? This morning, I started looking for them with obvious intial in .dll files, but no luck. I now use Windows Live or Windows Mail simply because W7 did not come with any e-mail program, so I figure Microsoft wanted me to use their own proprietary e-mail program which seemed like the best choice considering you cannot even down load Outlook Express successfully anymore!

thanks, A-man

[glc]

Search the drive for .dbx files. Each Outlook Express folder is its own file - inbox.dbx, sent items.dbx, outbox.dbx, etc. They will all be in one folder buried somewhere.

[audioman]

Firstly, thank you all so very much for your suggestions, it is greatly appreciated...

OK, so I go to " windows.old " and start punching in sent.dbx, inbox.dbx, etc. and it begins to search. All night goes by and still no finds ! Does anyone out there now what sub-folders I should be searchng to retreive theis information, there are soooooo many, I just don't know where to begin to refine the search. Sorry for the extended headaches I am causing you all ! LOL

A-man

[Strider]

I don't exactly where (someone here on PCMech will probably help you out), but I think I can steer you in the right direction. I'm 90 percent sure the folders that they are in are hidden and you are going to have to unhide them. I had to do this myself, for I had thunderbird emails that I had to restore.

[glc]

By default, they are under the users structure, not the windows structure. Search the WHOLE DRIVE. Search using a wildcard - search for *.dbx. Make sure your search includes hidden files and folders. If they are not found, the upgrade wiped them, sorry.