Needed: Earthlink Technical Help

It should be on your EarthLink homepage.....Log on to the site and check....

http://my.earthlink.net/

There are some emails and addresses stored on the "web mail" account, but the bulk of them are on the hard drive--where she stored them for "safekeeping" and not to use up too much web mail memory.

Where did she save them? notepad? Documents? pic file? It's probably a question of knowing where to look, and the file title...

Dunno. That's the problem. She was running EarthLink software on her confuser, and storing names in EarthLink's address book and emails in various folders (sort of like Windows Outlook). She did most of her EarthLinking on the home computer, but also accessed her EarthLink from web servers. We can get to the stuff on the web mail. Problem is, where did EarthLink put all that stuff on the hard drive?

Typically the program is the only thing stored on the hard drive...all your stuff should be in your account on-line at the EarthLink email web page....

You might try their email support (linked)

http://support.earthlink.net/articles/email/email-full-or-email-bouncing.php

we don't see that many computers in for repair with mindspring or earthlink as a mail host anymore but I believe it is still a web-based email service: You should be able to log into your earthlink account from just about any computer and check your email. This should include your address book & any saved emails, You should be able to download & install earthink on your new computer, log in to your account & check to see if everything is there. I'll check with my techs in the morning to confirm.

She's had the PC for ten years, and saved emails and addresses on the PC--not web mail. Sort of like what you can do with Outlook--keep some on a web server and store some on the PC. They are gone.

It is possible that like Outlook, Earthlink also stores your offline folders in the user directory - typically something like: C:\Documents and Settings\your name\Application Data\Earthlink (etc.)

If the Earthlink folders are there, possibly you do not have access to the user folder on that hard drive - so any search will not look into the locked out user folders.

If that be the case, you'll need to first 'Take ownership' of the user folders & files on the hard drive (C:\Documents and Settings\your name) and all subfolders, before you'll be able to access them.

Good luck.

You may have to boot from that hard drive installed in a new machine. The OS will recognise it is a new machine and demand a new registration, but with luck you can gain a grace period with it all working. Alternatively you can explain on the Micro$oft registration phone that your installation is not an extra copy.

I think JPool and JPV are on the right track. User folders in Windows have special permissions, and the Win7 machine is honoring those settings, and not showing the user folders on the old drive. Once you follow JPools instructions and set File Explorer to show all folders, you can probably navigate to the user folder in question. That still might not get you out of the woods, though. Windows may require a username and password to access the folders. I'm not savvy enough about Windows permissions to know exactly how to proceed, but a Google search may be a big help. There's probably a couple of ways you can get there, one way would be to create a user account on the Win7 machine using the same user and password she used on the old machine, or it might just prompt for her username and password when you try to access the user folder (that hopefully will show up once you tell it to show hidden files). You may end up finding a lot more of her files that she saved over the years as a bonus.

A Google search for "access user folder on external hard drive" got me a link to the following article on the Microsoft Technet forum:

LINK

Try that link first, and if that doesn't get you in, try the same Google search I did. Some of the more important things to keep in mind: you will not get anywhere if you are not logged in as Administrator on the Win7 machine you are trying to use to get to the files, and there may be some differences between XP and Win7 that you will need to take into account. I think a lot of the instructions I was looking at had to do with Win7 user profiles on the external drive, whereas you are trying to access an XP profile.

Good luck!

Tom D.

Not sure if the file would be hidden or not. that's worth investigation.

Outlook saves your archived information in

C:\Users\*user name*\Documents\Outlook Files\archive.pst

Note the innocuous archive.pst file name. Earthlink may have saved all the information to a file that was similar like archive.(earthlink file extension)

Then you would need earthlink to re-open that file. Or, locate the file and possibly browse to it from within the program.

I have never used earthlink, so I don't know - just thought the comparison might help.

Greetings SOP,

From what I have read so far it sounds like the permissions need to be adjusted as others have said. However, if that fails, I would suggest contacting a reputable computer repair service as they have forensic software that can recover "lost" files from damaged hard drives.

One other thing, if your wife was actively using Earthlink when the board failed, depending on the type of failure, it could have erased or damaged those directories just like removing a USB stick without stopping it can cause data loss.

Good luck Sir.

Thanks to all that commented so far. Looks like I have a bunch of stuff to try this weelend.

It worked! I found the EarthLink folders on the hard drive.

Youse guys are geniuses!!!! Thank you!

I posted a followup question on CR4 in a separate entry. Just in case you know the answers, here's the new question:

I previously posted a question about EarthLink, got good answers, and now I'm at Stage 2.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that my wife's old XP computer crashed with 10 years' worth of EarthLink emails stored on the hard drive. We salvaged the hard drive, put it in a kit, and connected it to the new Windows 7 laptop via USB. Thanks to the wizards on CR4, they told me how to find the EarthLink files. On to the next question:

What do I do now?

Here's a partial list of what files and folders I found:

EarthLink Program files

EarthLink-Connection.jpi

EarthLinkTotalAccess

EarthLink Mailbox (3 separate ones)

Elnkmail

...and hundreds more

If I click on any of them, I get this message:

The program can't start because MFC71.DLL is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

1. How do I get EarthLink on a Windows 7 laptop to access these files? We're still waiting for EarthLink to mail us Windows 7 software, and it will probably arrive from India any week now.

2. Can EarthLink webmail access files on a hard drive?

3. We have an ancient PC in a closet that has EarthLink software installed. Do you think if I resurrected it, that PC would be able to see the folders (the hard drive is portable, but I don't know if the ancient PC has a USB connection)

4. If I can't get EarthLink to access the folders, is there any way to convert them to something we can read? Like a text, Word or Word Perfect doc?

Rich

I'm no expert , but chances are that once you install earthlink on the new machine, you might be able to just copy the files on the old machine to the directories o the new machine that contain the same kinds of files.

Example ... if the old file is in a directory path called "C:/dir/dir/dir/filename.xyz" and your NEW machine ( after installing earthlink on the new one ) has a directory path called "C:/dir/dir/dir/filename.xyz" ... then by replaceing the file on the new machine , with the file from the old machine, you should get your contacts info and stuff back .

ALSO ...
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/mfc71dll.htm

Thanks Packrat.

We found everything. Youse guys were 10x more helpful than the EarthLink service reps in india.