Recover Old Settings and Email after family member reinstalls windows without formatting

Question

A family member installed Windows XP over the top of an existing install when it did not boot. They previously used outlook express for email and saved things to my documents. They should be able to access their old my documents files in C:\documents and settings\ but is there a way to retrieve lost outlook express settings and emails?

Answer 1

It looks like Outlook Express stores its files in the folder C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Identities\*\Microsoft\Outlook Express, where * is an identity number.

Once you find these files, it might be possible on the new Outlook Express installation to follow these instructions to restore Outlook Express mailbox data.