Bitdefender Has Wiped Out My Entire Pst

sherjack

BitDefender found a Trojan in my Outlook program and now the entire PST file is empty. I moved it to quarantine but years of our business email and, frankly, our life is now gone. There is nothing on the hard drive of the computer of a size that would indicate it was placed anywhere else. Nothing left at all. I hadn't backed up in a year.

Is there any way to get the file(s) back? Why on earth would it toast the entire data file rather than just cleaning up the infected emails????

VERY unhappy with this product!!! " />

nikki605

I know this doesn't help you now, but if you Google the phrase outlook pst quarantined you will find many results from all the major security software providers. Its not a problem unique to BitDefender, but I understand why you are angry.

The same problem potentially exists with the old Outlook Express email client. It stores emails in several .dbx files. If a scan finds a virus at the file level, the entire file will be quarantined containing many individual messages. This is one of the reasons I changed email clients to Windows Live Mail. It stores messages individually as its own file - .eml extension.

The most common recommendation I've read is to exclude the pst or dbx files from being scanned by whatever a/v program you are using. Each message and any attachments will still be scanned when you open the message and if a virus is found, you will be alerted.

You already mentioned having no backup. Enough said about that. I backup my entire email store every night.

Regards,

Gary A

Cristi Raducu

While in quarantine the pst file can be restored so the file is not lost.

For this you need to go in BitDefender Expert Mode ->Antivirus ->Quarantine tab.

Right click on the PST file and select Restore.

During this process Outlook must be closed.

After restoring your Inbox please run a new scan but this time take no action for the infected emails and post here the results.

sherjack

I know this doesn't help you now, but if you Google the phrase outlook pst quarantined you will find many results from all the major security software providers. Its not a problem unique to BitDefender, but I understand why you are angry.

The same problem potentially exists with the old Outlook Express email client. It stores emails in several .dbx files. If a scan finds a virus at the file level, the entire file will be quarantined containing many individual messages. This is one of the reasons I changed email clients to Windows Live Mail. It stores messages individually as its own file - .eml extension.

The most common recommendation I've read is to exclude the pst or dbx files from being scanned by whatever a/v program you are using. Each message and any attachments will still be scanned when you open the message and if a virus is found, you will be alerted.

You already mentioned having no backup. Enough said about that. I backup my entire email store every night.

Regards,

Gary A