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Introduction
In some strange situations it might occur that you want to recover your Outlook Account Settings from an old drive or partition on which you are unable to boot in Windows (or you just don’t want to). Unlike the Outlook mails which are stored in a PST file, the Outlook account settings are located in the Windows Registry. If you haven’t deleted your Windows files it is possible to access certain registry keys so that you can export all the account settings information and import it in your current registry.

This tutorial applies for Outlook 2007, but it might also be usable for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2010.

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Introduction
Here I will describe how to recover lost or deleted partitions with a cool tool called TestDisk that I recently found with which

I successfully restored my own broken partition. The tool is OpenSource and is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Symptoms and problem description
You are not able to boot your hard drive because the partition is damaged or deleted and you want to recover all your files.

Multiple recover options
There are a few ways to fix the problem since it depends on your specific situation and what options we have available.

If your lost partition is on a second drive that is also plugged in, like it was in my case, or you have a working partition on your hard drive that you can boot normally (while the damaged/deleted partition is on the same drive) , then read Recover partition from a booted working partition.

It is very possible that your only partition that you used to boot became corrupted and you don’t have a second working hard drive available. In that case you can use a Live CD by following the steps described in the part Recover partition by a Live CD.

Recover partition from a booted working partition
Your best way to recovery is from an already booted OS (Windows/Linux/Mac). You can download TestDisk from here. In the following description I will use TestDisk version 6.11.3 and show the recovery steps that may include some Windows specific details. This should be analogous to other versions and OS’es.

1. After you have extracted the downloaded file, run TestDisk from your extracted testdisk folder (win/testdisk_win.exe).
2. Now follow the TestDisk Step by Step instructions that are described on the TestDisk wiki page.

Recover partition by a Live CD
You might not be able to boot anything since you don’t have another working partition. In that case you can use a Live CD that will basically boot in memory after which you can start TestDisk without having to boot an operating system. Hence:

1. Download and then burn the TestDisk Live CD on an empty CD, insert it in your machine and boot from it. *
2. Now you can basically follow the same TestDisk Step by Step instructions as if booted from an OS.

* Note that you have to setup your BIOS such that your first boot option is your CD/DVD drive. In case your first boot option is your hard drive, the Live CD will not boot up!

Keep in mind
Keep also in mind that you have to be careful when performing the above described operations. Don’t overwrite or fully format the partition if you want to be able to recover your partition and files. Also note that there may be various situations that you can encounter that are not covered by this tutoriol, and hence I cannot be held responsible for any consequences that might occur after you decide to use the tool. It should not get dramatic, but keep in mind anyway that you use it at your own risk.

Today I started my desktop PC and when I wanted to login I got an unexpected Windows message:

“The referenced account is currently locked out and may not be logged on to.”

I retyped my username and password without thinking much about it, but it showed again the same message. Even after rebooting the PC, the same message was visible every time. A few minutes I sat and thought about it, but then suddenly I figured out what the real problem was.

Some time earlier I was testing some stuff and changed the domain and computer name of the PC to that of my laptop. So basically, both machines were connected to the network with the same name on the same domain, and that was the obvious problem.

So the problem was clear, and the solution simple. I just had to change the computer name and everything should be fine again, but the problem was that I was unable to login on my PC since my laptop was also running. I switched off the wireless adapter of the laptop, but it didn’t help. I had to switch off the PC wireless adapter, restart the machine and login. After changing the computer name and restarting again, the problem was resolved.

To summarize everything, if you get the same error, it might be the case that two machines are using the same name on the same domain, as was in my case. You should proceed as follows:

1. If you cannot login to Windows because you are getting the above mentioned error, switch off the wireless adapter, unplug your Ethernet cable or turn off the router and then (re)start your machine and login to Windows (so the machine shouldn’t be connected to the network/internet).
2. After you have logged in, make sure to change your computer name to some unique name that is accepted by the domain (or fix some other issues if you are experiencing another similar problem).
3. Now connect again to the network/internet and restart your machine.
4. You should be able to login again as usual.