Author Topic: Avast can't repair virus in outlook.pst  (Read 3063 times)

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sprettur

  • Guest
Avast can't repair virus in outlook.pst
« on: June 09, 2004, 05:45:50 AM »
Hey there folks!

I just installed the Avast Antivirus on my father's computer, and immediately found a virus called Win32:ASober in some post in the outlook.pst file.... list follows:

has been found in "C:\Documents and Settings\%User%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst\Personal Folders\Top of Personal Folders\Deleted Items\Anime, Pokemon, Manga, ...\www.anime4allfree.com" file.  
has been found in "C:\Documents and Settings\%User%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst\Personal Folders\Top of Personal Folders\Deleted Items\Thank You very very much\youtoo.com" file.  

has been found in "C:\Outlook\Outlook.pst\Personal Folders\Top of Personal Folders\Deleted Items\Anime, Pokemon, Manga, ...\www.anime4allfree.com" file.  
has been found in "C:\Outlook\Outlook.pst\Personal Folders\Top of Personal Folders\Deleted Items\Thank You very very much\youtoo.com" file.  

However, when I try to repair, delete, move, rename, or send to chest, I just get:
Error occurred during file repair: File is not packed.

Now, I'll admit I'm a total newbie with this program, but that message makes no sense to me  :-\

Help!?¿

Kobra

  • Guest
Re:Avast can't repair virus in outlook.pst
« Reply #1 on: June 09, 2004, 06:00:43 AM »
I ran into this issue too, Avast was the ONLY AV to find an old trojan I sent out to get evaluated a long time ago, it was in the Outlook.PST file as well, and couldn't be cleaned.

To remove it, I just went to that particular email, and deleted it.  That fixed it.  I found out that basically the Outlook.PST is a protected file only accessible from within Outlook itself.  Perhaps someone from Avast can chime in on this?

Heres some data on why Avast can't clean it:

The format of MS Outlook mail archives (*.pst) is protected by Microsoft. Therefore, in MailNavigator, *.pst files can be accessed only indirectly, with the help of Outlook-OLE. In effect, a search of messages in Outlook folders is achieved by Outlook's own resources.

To access a PST file, this file must be accessible from MS Outlook as a mail folder. It must be available for opening not only as an external file, but must be directly accessible in MS Outlook. In this case, MailNavigator will find the list of MS Outlook folders and the necessary folder can be loaded, or used for a message search.

When you have accessed your pst file in MS Outlook, go to "Information retrieval" in MailNavigator. Select as source for your search: MAIL of MS Outlook. A list of accessible mailboxes in the MS Outlook Directory will appear on the right. To load one of the folders into the navigator, double click on it.

sprettur

  • Guest
Re:Avast can't repair virus in outlook.pst
« Reply #2 on: June 09, 2004, 04:43:14 PM »
Hmmm.. that makes sense... I suspected that this would be Outlook's fault somehow ;)

Thanks a bunch for the help. I'm going to try to delete the messages manually (if I can find them)