PST or Personal Storage Table contains all your emails, contacts, tasks, calendar and other information on Microsoft Outlook. The PST file can get corrupted due to several reasons including the presence of bad sectors on the file, software conflicts, abrupt power shutdown, virus infection, broken file system, improper termination of Outlook and so on.
When you encounter PST corruption, you tend to go for scanpst.exe to repair your file. However, there are cases when a scanpst.exe application fails to get rid of corruption and fix your file. Instead, you get an error message
“Attempting to validate BBT Refcounts” Or
“Couldn’t find BBT entry in the RBT (211C8)”
Here are some of the drawbacks of Scanpst.exe:
- It cannot repair major corruption issues.
- It cannot repair password protected files.
- It does not support the repair if corruption occurs in the body part of the file.
- There are times when it accidentally deletes emails during the repair process.
- It cannot repair large sized PST files.
Let us look at few solutions to overcome this problem.
- Reduce PST file size
One can go about getting rid of causes. You can reduce PST file size by deleting unnecessary emails, tasks, draft messages, emptying Deleted Items folder.
Once the PST file size has reduced within permissible limits (Outlook 2002 and lower – 2 GB), (Outlook 2003, 2007 – 20 GB), (Outlook 2010, 2013, 2016 – 50 GB), you can use scanpst.exe to root out corruption in your PST file.
- Disable Add-ins
PST file corruption can also be caused by Outlook Add-ins. Here’s how you can disable them:
- Click File -> Options -> Add-ins.
- At the bottom of the window, where it shows Manage, click Go.
- Now select all the Add-ins you want to disable.
- To disable the Add-in, just uncheck the box in front of its name. To uninstall the Add-in, select it and click Remove.
- Click OK to save the changes.
- Reinstall Microsoft Outlook
If PST file corruption was caused due to corrupted Outlook registry, you can reinstall Outlook to get rid of this error.
- Click on Start
- Type Control Panel in the search bar.
- Click on Control Panel in the search result.
- Now click on Programs and Features.
- In the list of installed applications, right-click on Microsoft Office and click Uninstall.
- After Office suite is uninstalled, reinstall it.
If the PST file is corrupted even after reinstalling Microsoft Outlook, you can try the ever-reliable Remo Repair Outlook software to repair the corrupt PST file.
- Using Remo Repair Outlook
Remo Repair Outlook software repairs your corrupt PST file by following a non-destructive mechanism. It first reads the corrupt PST file, extracts contents from it and copies it into a new healthy file while fixing all the issues. Hence, your source file is unaffected.
You can also check out how to run inbox repair tool scanpst.exe.
Remo Repair Outlook is more efficient compared to scanpst.exe. It makes the PST file accessible when Microsoft Inbox Repair tool is not responding.
The PST repair tool can fix even an oversized PST file and works well on all versions of Windows and Mac Operating systems.
Once the repair process is complete, the software lets you view the repaired file using the Preview feature. You can later save it to a destination folder of your choice.
