Help - email has gone up in smoke....

sjpkgp

Hiya, please help if you can.

Last week my PC just went dead. New cable etc, all tried and to no avail. Checked the web and I think I have fried my CPU or motherboard. Decided I would get a new PC anyway (other one had been acting up for ages). Although there are a few things I have lost on the hard drive I back up to an external drive so decided to live with it. Got the new PC, set up my email (I am one of these fools who has kept a blueyonder email from telewest) and got it working, then realised I did not have my older emails, but also the email addresses of people I don't have anywhere else. I had flight confirmations on etc...but I was still OK as I have rung telewest in the past and they have been able to "refresh" them from their server. After a frustrating hour, the upshot is virgin media can't (they also said I had never had this done in the past). I am not going to phone them again as they are clearly unable or unwilling to help me. So, I have to sort this myself. My questions are:

- is it now worth "recovering" the hard drive from my other PC - is this likely to have my emails on ?
- I clearly have not backed up my emails to my external hard drive (I have cheked and it looks like I have backed up My documents and My downloads and My Pictures only) In future, I would do this.
- I am very upset with virgin media (more for the handling of the issue rather than the issue itself - I was passed from pillar to post for over an hour with daft technical responses before they finally said "No" and "it's your own fault). I asked to be moved, and they said you are in contract until April - so tough. Anyone any advice on this.

Clearly once I get my old emails back (which I pray I can and hope someone can advise) I will write to everyone and move emails to my googlemail address so I don't have this problem in the future.

Please help if you can.
Sal x

BillScarab

I'd have been amazed if they could recover your eamils and have never heard of Telewest being able to do it either. Once you have donwloaded them to your PC they are normally deleted from the ISP's server.

The good news is that your old hard drive will contain the info and should be OK. All you need to do is remove it from the old PC and fit it in the new one. The new PC will then just see it as a second drive and you will be abel to recover everything.

Rather than moving to googlemail my recommendation would be to buy a domain name and use that as your email address eg sjpkgp@sjpkgp.co.uk then you set it up so that it redirects everything form that address to whiochever email address you like. You will then never have to issue a new email address again, just chaneg the redirect if your 'real' email address chanages. Also you can have multiple email addresses for different purposes if you want.

espresso

sjpkgp wrote: »

My questions are:

- is it now worth "recovering" the hard drive from my other PC - is this likely to have my emails on ?

Yes obviously.

- I clearly have not backed up my emails to my external hard drive (I have cheked and it looks like I have backed up My documents and My downloads and My Pictures only) In future, I would do this.

Lessen learnt then, it's just as easy to back up your address book and e-mails folders!

- I am very upset with virgin media (more for the handling of the issue rather than the issue itself - I was passed from pillar to post for over an hour with daft technical responses before they finally said "No" and "it's your own fault).

It makes no sense to be annoyed with Virgin. After you have downloaded your e-mails, they are then your responsibility!

I asked to be moved, and they said you are in contract until April - so tough. Anyone any advice on this.

A contract is a contract regardless of ISP but your anger with Virgin is totally unjustified.

Clearly once I get my old emails back (which I pray I can and hope someone can advise) I will write to everyone and move emails to my googlemail address so I don't have this problem in the future.

Your choice but it's unnecessary to change from using an e-mail client on your PC which you are responsible for, to using web based e-mail. There is nothing wrong with having a gmail account as well though.

..................

sjpkgp

Thank you for your responses, and I will take the advice given, I think I was very grumpy after the india call centre re-setting up my current mailbox 3 times (i am now getting mail in triplicate, which I will sort tomorrow) and on phoning the UK version, telling me that "it had never ever been done before" and "you clearly are lying, nobody ever did this". Telewest used to generously offer this, but I am going back 4 yrs. They used to store mails for about a year and could "refresh" them onto your version. I only used it once, but it was very useful for people who had changed their PC.

Have taken the knackered PC down to my local man on our small high street and explained the problem ( i am not the first with this...he had amused attitude of a man who had seen it all before). Anyway. he is sorting it. I could probably do it myself, but given my poor track record........


thanks
SaL xxx

totalsolutions

Sorry to hear your woes but its down to you really. Just copy a file over to the new drive is easy enough or export and reimport the data file.
Fit the old drive to your new PC?