Recovering Quarantined Email

BitDefender 2010 quarantined >10 months of my email messages. I have been back and forth w/support since June 7th.

There was only 1 attempt to use the Antivirus/Quarantine/Restore feature. Old files are not set to be deleted. But, when the files 'fell off' of the Quarantine list displayed; there were no more suggestions of how to work within BD to restore.

The last 2 suggestions support made have been to download trial/demo versions of .dbx recovery tools. The first of these allowed for recovering emails 1 message at a time and something like a 14 day time frame for use. The 2nd tool recommended recovered 11 messages. I ran it 3 times over 2 different .dbx files and rec'd the same 11 emails as results all 3 times. Guess those 11 messages are all I get to see unless I buy the software.

How do I restore the missing email messages? Can't the darn files be copied/moved to a directory will BD will recognize them as files available to restore?

BitDefender Antivirus 2010, ver 13.0.21

Windows XP

Outlook Express for email

Any help w/b greatly appreciated.

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nikki605

Welcome to the forum. Sorry it has to be under these circumstances.

If the dbx file is no longer shown in quarantine, I have no better solution than what you have been advised and already tried. Whether it is with Outlook pst files or Outlook Express dbx files, this problem comes up from time to time with any antivirus product as discussed in this topic.

This is one of the reasons that I backup my email, along with all my data files, every night.

Regards,

hotintx

The 2 chances I had at restoring from BitDefender, there were 2 files listed in the restore screen. I did not restore anything, contacted support to ask if one file or the other s/b restored or if they s/b restored in a particular order. When I did attempt the restore, BD warned that the files were to be restored to the recycle bin and was I sure I wanted to proceed. I answered no and backed out of BD to determine the proper path for restoring. When I went back into BD, the files no longer showed as available to restore.

The files are still there.

Why is it that BD can no longer recognize them as available to restore?

Seems like a flaw in the product to me.

nikki605

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the BD Quarantine folder to see if there are any files inside. If there are, don't touch or do anything with them right now. If there are files in the folder, do their dates correspond to the date of the original email problem?

I downloaded the EICAR test file to my WinXP PC and scanned it with BD. It identified the file as infected and moved it to quarantine. Here is a screen shot of BD showing the file in quarantine and Windows Explorer showing the resulting files as they appear in the folder on disk.

If there are files in the quarantine folder, post a screen shot of Windows Explorer so we can see what is in there. Verify that BD no longer displays any files in quarantine. Do you remember the names of the files that were displayed on the BD quarantine tab?

[How to CAPTURE A SCREENSHOT]

- When the image you want to capture is on your screen press the "PrintScreen" key on your keyboard ("PrintScreen" is located at the top of the keyboard, at right; At this step we can not see anything, as the picture is copied into Windows's clipboard);

- Open a graphic editing application (We recommend using the standard Paint program, that comes with every Windows installation from Start > Programs > Accessories > Paint);

- Paste the picture in a new Paint document (using Edit > Paste);

- Save the file in JPEG format

- attach it to this topic.

Regards,

hotintx

TY for your assistance and also for not closing the thread due to age of last post.

The files that were originally available from the quarantine tab:

Deleted Items.dbx

Dc8.bak

Files by these names were (and still have copies there) in the temp folder 1 level down. They are only in the quarantine folder because I was instructed by tech support to copy them up 1 level after they dropped off of the BD quarantine available items menu. I actually have an extra folder level that tech supp did not specify. It is the folder named Desktop.

After trying the demo versions of the 2 recovery tools suggested by tech support, I've come to believe that these 2 files are quarantined files from the Outlook Deleted folder. Only of interest to me on principal of being able to restore w/in BD.

I have located another file named Inbox.bak within Outlook that looks more likely to be the messages that I would like to recover.

Anything here to work with?