How do I remove malware/virus from a PST file?

ship69

Hello

Every time I get a desktop search application to re-index my old .PST files (from my archived Outlook email) , I get loads of error message from F-secure. How can I identify and remove the relevant emails?

With thanks

J

Ukko

Hello,

I am only an F-Secure user (their home solution).

There is probably no easy way to do so. However, there is an article about Business products: How to find and delete infected emails in Outlook PST data files - F-Secure Community

Maybe such a design can be applied to Home F-Secure SAFE. Quite likely too, so you could try this - if you are confident in the steps described. You can also try looking in other articles for home solutions (by brief search around - I did find only that one in business part of KBs).

Otherwise, you can try to contact official F-Secure Support for assistance. For example, web-chat: Contact F-Secure support | F-Secure

Alternative ways are discussed there: How to find which mailbox is infected — F-Secure Community and some other related topics.

Thanks!

ship69

It was very strange. I implemented all the changes to Regedit that were described in your link: ("How to find and delete infected emails in Outlook PST data files - F-Secure Community")

However, although F-Secure seemed to spend a long time scanning each of the first three .PST files that I got it to manually scan (using a right-click on the .PST file)... suddenly it started scanning any of my .PST files in about 1 second flat! So clearly it was no longer doing full scan of the emails within each .PST file.

Ukko

Hello,

Sorry for my late response to your reply.

It was very strange. I implemented all the changes to Regedit that were described in your link: ("How to find and delete infected emails in Outlook PST data files - F-Secure Community")

So, maybe this article didn't really apply to home solutions (as I explained, this is about business solutions, but the core can be generic). Or not applied to current F-Secure SAFE builds.

suddenly it started scanning any of my .PST files in about 1 second flat! So clearly it was no longer doing full scan of the emails within each .PST file.

Could you check other UI options? For example, these ones: Running a virus scan manually | SAFE | Latest | F-Secure User Guides (""Scan only file types that commonly contain harmful code"" / ""Scan inside compressed files"").

Also, was it about only .PST files? or for any? Did you restart services or system reboot?

Anyway, if you are still in trouble - good to contact their official Support channels for assistance. For example, web-chat: Contact F-Secure support | F-Secure

They can provide remote help and to advice / check current state of device or F-Secure SAFE configuration.

Thanks!

Simon

Would this be of any use? I've not tried it myself, just found it by Googling:

https://www.nucleustechnologies.com/pst-viewer.html

Wondered if you might be able to open the PST files and scan the emails individually?