Outlook outlook express .pst file problem

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glen_A

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My outlook express .pst file consists of over 200 fragments, which I would like to fix. I found references to contig.exe on various forums and have downloaded it. I have got to the cmd window and typed in the path for the cmd file but the tool does not seem to be able to deal with spaces in folder names e.g "Documents and Settings".

Any tips?
Outlook Express 6
XP Media Centre Edition SP3
 
Outlook Express uses a .dbx file to store the mailbox content. What you're using is MS Outlook which has the personal storage in a .pst file. It gets fragmented due to things coming in and out all the time. Ant particular problem?
If you defragment the partition it should do as good as fragmenting a single file. Do it regularly once a week and it should be enough. You can use third party defragmenters which are better than the windows one.
What size is the file? It can't be too big. A much better practice is to create an archive.
And what do you mean that it can't deal with the spaces in Documents and Settings?
 
Thanks for the input. I have now solved the problem by another means but since you took time to reply here is the info.
I am using diskeeper. The .pst file was 1.6GB but was in over 200 fragments. This meant there was never a big enough chunk of free space to defrag the pagefile, which I suspect to be responsible for slow performance.
The path to the .pst file ends
Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst but I got the message
No files found that match Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst i.e the space in Application Data semed to be a problem.
However, I found outlook express has a function which allowed me to define a new store. I did this on the D: partition and guess what - it now uses dbx files and I have deleted the .pst files.
Thanks for your input.
 
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I think that there was some confusion between using MS Outlook's files and Outlook Express files. Express doesn't read .pst, they're only good for MS Outlook. Outlook puts its stuff into .dbx which is located elsewhere (C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{E3FE25C3-210E-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx}\Microsoft\Outlook Express). There is no relation between the two stores. Good that it's sorted, but I think the the issue was not related to .pst <-> Outlook Express.
 
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