They are all still there, un-archived.

You just need to 'hack' the search function to
get it to go back further than 2 years.

Just follow these steps...

1> Hit the search link and go to ADVANCED search.
2> Enter you search criteris and/or forum category as per normal.

3> Where its defaults to '1 Week' deep, hit the 'week' dropdown menu.
It will only APPEAR to give you the choice of days,weeks,etc.
Just choose the EMPTY option at the top of the list. It is really there!
Now the search goes all the way back to the start of time...

Just be warned, it will still only return a maximum of 200 results, and they
will be the most recent ones.

Try playing with the "Older than" settings as well. Combine the two and
you should be able to get to the area you want.

I was able to get back to 2007 with my test search...


Best of luck.