The reason we have to get the naming conventions straight is that you may be
talking about something completely different than I am, in which case the
answers I give may not apply to your problem at all.  If you're asking for
help, you should give the information asked for by the person helping, since
maybe they have a good reason for trying to clarify things.  The Outlook
Address Book is simply another view of your Contacts folder, and not a
separate entity; therefore, you should be creating Distribution Lists in the
Contacts folder, not Groups in the Address Book.

Along the same lines -- I asked you if you had overwritten the new .PST
file, created by Outlook when you reinstalled, with your old saved .PST from
before the crash.  I don't see a direct answer to that question in your
reply -- you say you "replaced" the new .PST with the saved .PST.  Should I
assume that you meant yes, you overwrote the new file with the old (which
would be a bad thing)?  Or is that not what you meant at all?  Overwriting
one .PST with another can cause problems.  Since a .PST does not have to be
in any particular location on your drive, it is always better to put it
where you want it and then point Outlook to it.

And no, Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002 used the same format for .PST files,
as did all older Outlook versions, so there is no incompatibility issue
there.  Outlook 2003 is the first version to use a different .PST format
which is not backwards compatible.

Try running the Inbox Repair Tool against your .PST file and see if it finds
any errors.  Search your drive for a file called scanpst.exe and run it.
Let it make a backup of your .PST before fixing anything, just in case.