Me again, after further trial & error and following same steps to restore an older back up of an older .pst file to another PC, it would appear the first and most important problem (to us) we need to fix is the repair of our current .pst file.

It is the file that when I tried to repair in situe the PC said could not proceed until hard disk error repaired.

It is the file I copied onto an external hard drive and tried to use Inbox repair when I imported it to our other laptop with outlook on - this failed and left us with empty recovered files.

The upshot is can anyone recommend any other repairs for outlook pst file, there appears to be loads of software solution suggestions to fix the files when google but am fearful of going down this route...needle in haystack to choose for a start! HELP!