An Outlook PST is designed to store local copies of all your email messages, notes, contacts etc. for Microsoft Outlook. But the file can get corrupt due to several factors. To repair it, Microsoft provides Scanpst.exe also known as inbox repair tool that is automatically installed with all MS Outlook installation options depending on the operating system. It can fix several corruption issues of PST, but not all. If the file is oversized or the internal data is corrupt, the Scanpst tool will not repair. Additionally, the tool cannot serve as a workaround if the nature of corruption is severe. For these reasons, third-party tools are available that can repair a corrupted PST in all scenarios of corruption.

To exemplify Scanpst failure scenarios, consider a situation when your Outlook PST file is damaged. As suggested, when you try to run Scanpst tool, it fails and results an error as below:

"Fatal Error: 80040900"

The tool crashes and the corrupted PST remains unaffected.

Cause

The most likely reason for 80040900 error to occur is that PST is oversized, larger than 2 GB. The Scanpst.exe Tool cannot fix an ANSI formatted PST that is corrupted due to 2 GB file size limitation.

Solution

You can apply following solutions to repair the corrupted PST:

1. Since the file is oversized, you can use Microsoft PST Crop Tool (Pst2gb.exe) to truncate the file under 2 GB and then run Scanpst.exe utility to repair it. The PST Crop Tool truncates the file by a user-defined value and thus, some of your email messages may find missing from the resultant copy. Thus, it is suggested to backup the PST before using it.

2. You can use a third-party PST file repair utility that applies powerful scanning algorithms repair the file. The applications can fix PST corruption in all logical scenarios, when Microsoft utility cannot do so. These are specialized Inbox Repair Tool with graphically rich interface and options. Such software use safe repair techniques, basically because they are designed read-only. Thus, running the utilities causes no harm to the original emails' integrity and file structure.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair is a powerful tool for all PST corruption issues. The advanced Inbox Repair Tool supports Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002 and 2000. It is a comprehensive repair tool that provides rich graphical features and risk-free scanning. The tool can restore all Outlook items from a corrupted .pst file and is competent to extract deleted items as well.