Outlook 2003 PST files corrupting daily

[Fardringle]

One of the computers at a client's office keeps getting corrupted Outlook 2003 PST files on an almost daily basis. The computer is an older Pentium 3 system being used as a dedicated fax server running Windows XP Pro. It ran without problems for almost two years up until about 3 weeks ago. Now it is getting corrupted PST files without any apparent reason that I can find. The errors can be corrected temporarily by running SCANPST on the files or by creating new PST files, but almost invariably there will be new errors within a day or two. I have repaired Outlook with no change then completely removed and reinstalled Outlook a week later but the computer is still getting the PST errors.

It does not appear to be a problem with the drives or drive controllers in the computer. There are three hard drives (two small SCSI drives and one large IDE drive) in the computer and the PST files become corrupted on any of the drives. I created new PST files on a network drive on the office file server and pointed Outlook to those new files and they became corrupted within a few hours as well. Manufacturer drive diagnostic programs report no errors on any of the drives.

Outlook appears to work normally when the PST files are not corrupted, and all other programs (including stability tests and burn-in tests) work perfectly on the machine. No new programs have been installed on the computer in the last year other than the testing programs I installed in the past two weeks to try to determine the cause of the problem.

The PST files are only 85MB (Personal Folders) and 34MB (Archive file) so the file size itself shouldn't be an issue. All messages in the folders are simple text files with small attached TIF image copies of faxes that users send via email instead of over a phone line.

 

[Fardringle]

Any ideas?

 

[phatrabt]

Are there any other issues? You say "stability tests and burn-in tests" and by that do you mean Memtest? I'm just asking because your issue may perhaps be bad memory. Another thing, have you thought perhaps a PS issue? I know it's far-fetched but if the PSU is straining it could cause data issues. Just an idea.

 

[Fardringle]

Yes, I have run MEMTEST, Prime95, SiSoft Sandra's burn-in test, and a few other stress tests with no errors of any kind. If the power supply was a problem, I would expect it to fail when maxing out all components of the system at the same time, and I would expect to see data corruption in programs other than Outlook. As it is, all files on the computer other than the Outlook PST files are fine. Daily backups, including data verification, confirm that. Errors in the backups are how I was first notified of the corruption in the PST files.