Advanced Outlook Password Recovery (AOLPR)

Advanced Outlook Password Recovery (AOLPR) is a program to recover lost or forgotten passwords (including multilingual ones) to protected Personal Storage Files (*.PST) used by Microsoft Outlook (all versions: 97, 98, 2000, XP, 2003) to store emails, contacts etc. The program can also recover passwords to mail accounts created in Outlook 98/2000/XP/2003. All passwords are recovered instantly.

Requirements :
•Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Server 2003
•less than 1 megabyte of free space on hard disk

To get password to PST file (all versions of Outlook are supported: 97, 98, 2000, 2002/XP and 2003), simply select the file you want to recover the password(s) for: press the Open file button and select an appropriate PST-file. If the given file is corrupted, or used by another application, or not password-protected – appropriate error message will be displayed. Otherwise, the password will be recovered immediately, shown in the message box and written to the log window. You can copy recovered password to Clipboard and run Outlook just from AOLPR, put the cursor into the password box, and press Ctrl-V or Ctrl-Ins there to paste the password from the Clipboard (to avoid mistyping).

Please note that in some cases, the password recovered by AOLPR is not the same as the one which has been originally set. That's due to encryption algorithm used in Outlook – the original password is not stored in the file. But that password (shown by AOLPR) will be accepted by Outlook without problems – just try. And of course, after logging into Outlook, you'll be able to change that password to any one, or just remove it.

For Outlook 98, 2000, 2002/XP and 2003 (sorry, Outlook 97 is not supported officially, while AOLPR may work for it), you can also recover information about email accounts (server address, login, password and server type) stored in Outlook: press the second button on the toolbar: Get Passwords for Outlook Mail Accounts. If Outlook is installed in the system (and there is at least one email account there), AOLPR will open new window with appropriate fields (see above). From there, for any account you can copy password to Clipboard by pressing an appropriate button at the bottom.

Also, the program shows the server type (POP3, IMAP4 or HTTP) and Password Storage Type. Some information (describing what exactly the program is doing) is printed into the log window.

Please note that all account/password information is stored in Windows Registry (in Protected Storage, to be exact), and being accessed by AOLPR using standard Windows API. That means that if you’ve re-installed (not upgraded) Windows, all your settings will be lost. Right now, AOLPR cannot extract it from binary Registry files – probably, it will be implemented in the next version.

If you experience any troubles when trying to get any passwords (for mail, news or identities), e.g. the program just crashes or does not show the password, you can use debug mode. To enable it, press Options button on the toolbar, check the Enable logging box, and select the path to log file (or just leave the default value). Then, try to recover the passwords again, and send us that log file. It does not contain your passwords, just some technical information (what does the program do: accessing particular Registry keys, reading and decryption data etc). It would really help us to locate and fix a problem.

Typically, Microsoft Outlook Express stores all passwords in the Protected Storage subsystem. All passwords are stored in system Registry in encrypted form. However, some old versions can store account passwords in a plain (unencrypted) form, or encrypted with weak algorithm (logical XOR operation). In some cases, AOEPR can show wrong passwords, for example if your system Registry is damaged, or you do not have enough rights (permissions) to access some keys in Registry, or Protected Storage subsystem is not installed on your computer. Displaying of Password Storage Types will help you to identify why some passwords are displayed incorrectly. Here is a brief description of Password Storage Types:

PS Password is successfully retrieved and stored in Protected Storage.
OL Password is successfully retrieved and stored in system Registry using "old-style" weak encryption algorithm.
NP Password was not found in Protected Storage, in some cases it indicates that user name is used as password, or Protected Storage subsystem is damaged.
UN Unknown Password Storage Type. You may use version of Outlook Express that is not supported by AOEPR, or your system Registry is damaged.
ER Error in password retrieving.
NR Password was not retrieved. You do not have enough rights to unlock the Protected Storage, or Protected Storage is not installed on your machine.
NO Password for this account is absent.
O97 Outlook 97; password is stored with MAPI.


Home page URL : http://www.elcomsoft.com/aolpr.html