Outlook Express won't delete e-mails suddenly!
I successfully deleted 260 junk e-mails; a rogue piece of "HSBC" phishing from Indonesia refused to be deleted. This e-mail even resisted having its headers copied into an abuse report program but copied text from a site just visited. Finally pasted the headers and sent to ISP then an automatic [?] compaction began of all my folders. Since then, I am unable to delete any e-mails at all. My virus detection & firewalls etc are fully up-to-date and cookies have been removed before session start by Xoftspy. I closed and restarted WinExpress but still no joy. What now? Can you please help me? Thanks in anticipation of a rescue - SpeechTrainer2 people need an answerI do too
March 21st, 2010 3:42am

Move any messages you want to save out of Deleted Items, Sent Items and the Inbox to folders that you create and then close OE and delete the dbx files for these three folders. Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location of your Outlook Express files. Write the location down and navigate to it in Windows Explorer or, copy and paste it into Start | Run. In WinXP, Win2K & Win2K3, the OE user files (DBX and WAB) are by default marked as hidden. To view these files in Windows Explorer, you must enable Show Hidden Files and Folders under Start | Control Panel | Folder Options Icon | View, or in Windows Explorer | Tools | Folder Options | View. With OE closed, find the Deleted Items.dbx, Sent Items.dbx and Inbox.dbx files and delete them. New files will be created automatically when you open OE. Compact all folders as described below. To help prevent this in the future: Do not archive mail in the Inbox or Sent Items. Create your own user defined folders and move the messages you wish to save to them. Empty Deleted Items folder daily. Although dbx files have a theoretical capacity of 2GB, I recommend about a 300MB max for less chance of corruption. Information about the maximum file size of the .dbx files that are used by Outlook Express:http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=903095 After you are done, follow up by compacting your folders manually while working *offline* and do it often. Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything until the compacting is completed. Turn off e-mail scanning in your anti-virus program. It is a redundant layer of protection that eats up CPUs and causes a multitude of problems such as time-outs and account setting changes. Your up-to-date A/V program will continue to protect you sufficiently. For more, see:http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3 Bruce Hagen MS-MVP [Mail]
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
March 21st, 2010 3:54am

This topic is archived. No further replies will be accepted.

Other recent topics Other recent topics