Outlook Express Help please

[jjtrooper]

Hi all,

I use XP home edition and have come across a problem with outlook express 6. Been using it for years with no real issues.

I now have four messages in my inbox that I am unable to open, read or delete. They are all from a well known source so should be ok. Everything else works on OE fine, as soon as I click on any of these four messages the whole thing freezes and I have to close down OE altogether.

Has anyone else had this problem, or can anyone tell me how I can delete these messages.

Many thanks in advance

Jayne

[bobbyraw]

I don't want to sound sarcastic but who said because its from a well know source it's a good email. it could be a worm that sent the emails from the well known source. do you have any antivirus installed on the PC. If not get Avast it comes with an email scanner. Scan your PC for possible threats.

[compdoc]

I don't want to sound sarcastic but who said because its from a well know source it's a good email. it could be a worm that sent the emails from the well known source. do you have any antivirus installed on the PC. If not get Avast it comes with an email scanner. Scan your PC for possible threats.

I agree

email address can also be spoofed, so if it says its from one source it could be from another

[jjtrooper]

Hi,

I appreciate your comments and no I didn't think they were sarcastic at all. I do have the full works ie antivirus, spyware etc etc loaded on my computer but I will try your suggestion and see i it picks up something that mine didn't.

I'll let you know how I get on and thanks again.

Jayne

[bobbyraw]

what antivirus are you running and is is up to date, ( Subscription and patches)

[jjtrooper]

Hi,

I am using my own internet providers software - ntl Netguard. It is updated regularly and is very efficient and has been over the last few years.

I am in the process of running Avast so I'll let you know how I get on. It hasn't found anything yet but there is still time.

Very much appreciate your comments and help

Kind regards

Jayne

[gerbil]

Hi... OE is good at this, corrupting its mailboxes. Well-known for it, in fact. It is most likely to occur if you let your mailboxes get large. How large? How long is a piece of string.
I can help you to delete those particular mails, I can even help you read them but not to see pictures.
Lessee, a typical OE mailbox eg your inbox, is basically a long stream of text, your emails, strung one after another. Even the graphics are text characters. The individual emails are separated by their headers, the to and from info. As a new email arrives it is added to the bottom of the string. At the top of this long stream of joined emails is file header info, a list of all those to's and from's and subjects. Right, now you know that you can do stuff.
Open an explorer window, navigate to your OE mailboxes under your account in Local Settings. There will be a hashed name folder, and inside that your email boxes. Open a notepad and drag inbox.dbx into it [if it is large, say a couple hundred megs, then it may take a couple minutes to load!!; you may need to tickle the notepad with your cursor to get it to come to life after disk activity stops]. Good, there they all are; now open OE, and using [part of] a Subject entry from the bad emails as the search text do a Text Find op in that notepad. Repeat until you get to the email body.. any pictures will be a block of illegible characters, but you can read the text content, and copy it into somewhere you can save it.
Now to get rid of em, to delete the bad emails.... Go into OE, create a new Folder and drag into it all the good emails. Check you can read em still.
Back to explorer, your mailbox, and rename inbox.dbx to inbox.dbx.old. Later, when you are satisifed you can delete this.old file.
Back to OE, close and restart it - that will generate a new inbox.dbx. If you wish you can now [in OE] drag into the new inbox any or all emails from that folder you created. When happy that you can see them all you can go back to explorer and delete that inbox.dbx.old file.
[btw, in your mailbox folder, dyu see the size of that Deleted Items.dbx file? Yep, every email you have ever deleted is in there, even after you have [in OE] emptied the deleted items folder!! All that does is slightly alter a character in the fileheader code so that that particular email is "invisible", but it is extant.... which is why cops jus plain luv OE. Frightened? All your naughty stuff is in there? Then just delete that Deleted Items.dbx file; OE will create a new, empty one when you restart it. There, safe. Well, as long as you delete it from your bin too...]
Get organised, keep the inbox to a couple dozen emails at most. That way you won't be too sad when one day OE decides to tear em all up.

[gerbil]

Actually, a revision in the order of things will make the process easier...
Make a new folder in OE, drag into it from the inbox all the mail you wish to keep.. avoiding the probelm emails...
Delete that mail and the junk you do not wish to keep from your inbox... again avoiding the problem emails....
Then go into explorer and drag your inbox.dbx into notepad... and so on from there.

[jjtrooper]

Hi and thanks for your replies.
I have completed a thorough scan with avast and it didn't find anything wrong.
I will try the next suggestion and see if that works.
Many thanks
Jayne