PST Turned 0 KB in Size After Running 'CHKDSK' Command!

MS Outlook application is very prone to corruption which causes several issues for the user. Generally corruption of the PST files occurs due to several reasons among which the main reasons include unexpected system shutdown, abrupt application shutdown, improper closing of MS Outlook application, network issues, third-party interruptions and mostly due to 2 GB file size limitation. The corruption of the PST file leads it to behave abnormally. In fact all of a sudden your PST turn 0 KB file size which can be very annoying and sole reason for such nasty thing is corruption.

Corrupt PST file may show degraded performance issues and may fail to open. So, to fix such issues it is suggested to immediately restore the file from the updated backup copy. But if backup of the file is not available, then use Outlook's Inbox Repair Tool or Scanpst.exe utility. If this tool also fails then using Outlook PST Repair tool is the only option to get the PST files back. To understand the situation lets consider a situation where you are using Windows based operating system and observed some file system corruption symptoms. In order to fix this issue you run 'CHKDSK' command and it worked correctly. But after this when you tried to open your Outlook application, it failed with an error. And on examining you noticed that your PST file turned 0 KB in size.

Reason

The reason behind this kind of behavior from PST file is nothing but the corrupt PST which could also occur because of unsuccessful 'CHKDSK' attempt like reallocating and re-indexing.

Solution

In order to resolve this issue you first need to try to use Scanpst.exe Outlook inbuilt utility which is located in different locations in different Outlook versions. Here you will find this tool -

• system_drive:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033
• system_drive:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033
• system_drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 (for Outlook 2007)
• system_drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14 (for Outlook 2010)

Alternatively, you can use Windows Search or Find Option to find this utility in your Windows system. Once you get this tool just launch it and show it the path of corrupt PST file, follow the steps and run this tool, once the process completes you will get all your PST data repaired and opening perfectly. In case the issue persists then use third party Outlook PST Repair software and fix the issue successfully.