See point 3a and 3b below. I suspect you have background compaction enabled
and that can lead to message store corruption.
You might need to set up a new Identity via File | Identities and then do 3A
and then add your accounts and start over.
steve
LuckyStrike said:
Sorry to cross-post and repost but the whole thing is acting strange.I
waited for my message to appear and it hasn't as yet.
I'm at a loss to explain this one but at appx. 2:00 am MDT most of the 20
plus NG's I subscribe to were shortened in their total stored content so as
to only retain the messages of late last month up to the present. This also
emptied all of my special personal folders as well. Ironically the W98 gen
discussion, which I use the most, still goes back a few months to June and
remains untouched in the main folder for it, but all of the reply to's and
show conversations are empty, along with special folders for it such as
links, how to, saved messages, etc. All previously read messages of my
conversations are marked as if unread. A few such as public.windowsupdate,
public.win98.shell, inetexplorer.ie6.setup, and public.outlook, were totally
emptied.
I only use OE for NG's but I'm mystified.
No virus were found. Any suggestions, comments?
1. Blocked attachments. MS has now set OE to block all attachments. See
these articles for explanations:
Cannot Open E-Mail Attachments in Outlook Express After You Install SP1
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=329570
OLEXP Using Virus Protection Features in Outlook Express 6 (Q291387)
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q291/3/87.ASP
2. Outlook Express crashes when composing messages
MS introduced a bug in the latest security patch (810847).
Go to Windows Update and get the latest IE security patch and that should
fix it.
See
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=813489
3. All messages are lost.
There are two contributing factors to this problem. To fix this issue
a. Turn off background compaction under Tools | Options | Maintenance for
each Identity you have, and then compact manually and frequently using File
| Folder | Compact all. This will make OE more stable.
b. Turn off email scanning, autoupdate, and internet filter with your
antivirus software. Many antivirus products interfere with the operations
of OE resulting in loss of messages. Turning off these options does not
affect the ability of your antivirus software to block infections.
If you do lose your messages, you can try using my DBXtract program to
attempt to recover the lost messages. Note that dbx files are hidden in
Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/
If you have upgraded your version of IE and OE or your OS version, and all
your messages are lost, then see this article (note that the technique in
the article does not only apply to the issue addressed in the article
title):
OLEXP: Mail Folders, Address Book, and E-mail Messages Are Missing After You
Upgrade to Microsoft Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;313055
If File | Import | Messages does not work, ignore the error message, which
is erroneous in itself, and try one of the following techniques to get your
messages back:
aa. Right click on each dbx file or a selection of them and go to
Properties
and clear the read only attribute of the files. Then try File | Import |
Messages again.
bb. Import the dbx files individually. See the last paragraph on this page
for how to do that:
http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx
cc. As a last resort use DBXtract
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/
4. How does one reinstall IE and OE?
This article seems to work for other OSs than just XP:
How to Reinstall or Repair Internet Explorer and Outlook Express
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q318378
See point 11 below first.
5. How does one backup and restore or transfer OE messages and settings:
Note that there is also a link in this article to MVP David Guess's free
OEBackup program (
www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/)
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/backup/index.htm
6. Links in email don't work:
see the links on this page
http://www.oehelp.com/
7. Outlook Express is slow.
See the various performance issues and how to address them on this page:
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/problems/performance.htm
8. Outlook Express won't start.
This is usually due to a conflict between what is recorded in the registry
and what is in the message store. Often, one can fix this problem by
deleting folders.dbx. If that doesn't work, then try moving all the dbx
files to another directory and see if that fixes it. Alternatively, see
these articles and also point 3a above:
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/problems/performance.htm#nostart
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q245/4/19.asp
9. Address book information:
The Windows Address Book
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/files/wab.htm
10. Links are broken in email messages:
This is fixed with the Mondo Patch for OE6 SP1 (which is the millimeter the
MVPs got the behemoth to move):
October 2002, Cumulative Update for Outlook Express 6.0 SP1 (Q331923)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/recommended/q331923/default.asp
11. Installation issues:
Most of the problems with a faulty installation are due to other programs
running during the install and interfering with the updating of necessary
files. Antivirus software is notorious for this. To minimize such
interference, in Win98, WinMe, and WinXP go to Start | Run and type msconfig
and disable all startup items and non Microsoft services. Then reboot.
Then proceed with the installation. Startup items can then be re-enabled.
Since Win2000 does not have msconfig, one has to manually go to this
registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
You can export this key and then delete all values under it. Then disable
all antivirus services under Computer Management | Services and then reboot.
Then install. After the installation you can import the key back into the
registry to restore the values and re-enable the services.
12. Microsoft does not email security patches to you.
If you get an email that appears to come from Microsoft with a security
update attached, do not open the attachment. It is a virus. No matter how
official the email looks, it is a hoax.
See this article:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/news/patch_hoax.asp
13. Screening unwanted email and Spam
Everybody gets unwanted email these days. Much of this email is either
trying to sell you something you probably don't want or else is trying to
infect you with a virus via an email attachment. What can you do?
a. Never open an attachment. First save an attachment to disk and then
scan it with your antivirus software to ensure it is not infected (make sure
your antivirus software definitions are up to date). If the attachment is
from someone you don't know, don't even bother opening it. Its not worth
it.
b. Screen email. Disable the Preview Pane (you can put a button on the
toolbar to turn this on and off). Then go to View | Columns and enable most
of the headers. That way you can scan the headers and pick out the various
obvious unwanted mail. Once you find messages that you don't want to open,
select the headers of those messages without opening the messages and
perform a Shift-Delete to permanently remove them from the folder. Once
they are removed, they will no longer be accessible, so don't do this on
messages you might wish to keep.
c. On messages left that might be worth opening, go to Tools | Options |
Read and check the box that says "read all messages in plain text"
(available only with IE6 SP1 or WinXP SP1 and higher). Reading in plain
text prevents any returns to the spammer's server, so your email address
cannot be validated in that fashion. In addition, it prevents malformed or
malicious HTML code from executing. If you find the message is worth
viewing as HTML, then you can go back to Tools | Options | Read and uncheck
the option to read in plain text only and then reopen the message to view it
as HTML (note that you can put this button on a toolbar with OETool
(
www.oehelp.com/OETool/).
d. If you get unwanted email repeatedly from the same source, you can set
up message rules to block out some of these messages. See the help file in
OE and also
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/tips/rules.htm .
e. If you find a message that is spam and that offends you or is deceptive,
go to Message | Forward as attachment and send it to (e-mail address removed) .
The US Federal Trade Comission is launching a major crackdown on deceptive
and offensive spam. Visit their site at
www.ftc.gov/spam for more info.
I've probably left off some issues, but I believe these address the most
common problems that users encounter with OE. In addition, please check the
websites of the individual OE MVP's that address other issues not listed
here:
Tom Koch:
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/
David Guess
http://www.mindspring.com/~oe_oh/
Jim Pickering
http://home.attbi.com/~jimpickering/
Frank Saunders
http://www.fjsmjs.com/OE/index.htm
and my site at
http://www.oehelp.com
If you don't find your problem addressed, then feel free to post a question
in these newsgroups and we will be more than happy to respond and attempt to
help.
