Vanished e-mail

What ho one and all,

Running XP Pro, and use Outlook Express 6, both POP3 and web based (when I want it.) Within Local Folders (POP3), I have the usual In-box, Out-box, Sent, etc but also had (note the past tense) a number of folders that I had created.

This morning, I checked the e-mail and all was fine; I received around six incoming which topped up the total in the In-box up to around 50. Just returned home, fired up the computer from hibernate and all folders are empty, zilch, nothing and not even the folders that I created.

I do have back-ups made on the fly with File Hamster, but even when using the restore feature of FH, the OE folders are empty. Addresses are all showing and safe.

I know I did not delete everything with one button press, so where have the all gone?

Grateful for any advice and thanks

Rex

Look in the recycle bin... OE has a compress function that runs every 100 times OE gets closed. It's been known to kill folders..

Nope, nothing there. The way OE looks right now, it is as if it was freshly installed with everything empty.

My file Hamster back-up file lists the main folders (Inbox, Outbox, Folders, etc) but not the folders that I created. Zilch. And although the back-ups have a kb size beside them, when I hit the 'Restore' button, the relevant folder in OE is empty.

So I did a test to ensure that File Hamster is working, and it is. It restored the deleted file, no problem. So it would seem that my back-up OE files are also empty! Is that possible?

Could a virus have deleted all these files, basically hitting anything marked *.dbx?

Am currently running some scans but only finding the usual tracking files; AntiSpyware did find one threat but I have no idea what is is.

Quote:

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Could a virus have deleted all these files, basically hitting anything marked *.dbx?

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Usually someone who infects a computer would want to perserve files related to email so they can be used for spamming or harvesting email addresses and/or personal info.

Try using Recuva (free) to see if any .dbx files can be found and retrieved from deletion.

https://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

May be I was looking for the wrong thing in Recycle Bin, but the folders are there as *.bak.

Via a Google search, was suggest to rename the existing draft.dbx folder and restore the Draft.bak, then rename it Draft.dbx. (Just using Draft as an example.) Done that and the result is, in )E, Drafts is empty.

Post the sizes of the .dbx files.

Possibly useful link:

https://www.oemailrecovery.com/outlo...-recovery.html


Note: There is a size limit to the .dbx files. If they get too big, you can lose things.

Here is what I don't understand. Using OE Extractor, the attachment is a section of Sent mails that are found. Clicking on any entry, opens the e-mail as a *.eml. So most of my stuff is still in the back-up folder. Although the folders that I created have all gone!

But if I copy the entire folder to the default e-mail location, there is nothing. Should I copy the folders called Folder, POP3, Offline, etc for OE to work? I read about switching identities but I only have one, mine. Test e-mails from/myself and from my wife, all arrive, and can be deleted just fine. Close/open OE and they new ones are there, so OE seems to be working.

I know I have not deleted anything because this morning when I checked, the Inbox held around 50; this afternoon, nothing; and there is no way I have deleted all the folders in one hit.

I can assure you that the various boxes are not over loaded. Only a few days ago, I cleaned the Delete Box and had around 300 entries left; Inbox had around 50 and Sent, around 150. So was nowhere near the limits, whatever they may be.

However, I guess I have picked up something, so this morning, restored C: from an image file. Still don't have the e-mails, but now, I cannot delete anything from within OE. I see that it is not possible to reinstall on XP, so is the re-register (regsvr32 shdocvw.dll and regsvr32 browseui.dll) the way to go?

Or is there a better way?

OE Mail Revcovery looks as if it will work, but only to save everything as *eml. Better than nothing!

Final question, OE Recovery found oe folders from five years ago, that I had long since deleted. How come they are not overwritten?

Thanks

OK, I have solved the non-deleting issue. In trying to recover stuff, I was playing with the one folder that did not matter if i totally lost it, namely, Delete. In the process, I created Delete.old, old2 and old3. guess that was confusing OE.

Having deleted all the Delete folders for the store, deleting from Inbox is working.