Outlook Express data corruption problem

Factual Questions
1

Maybe we have some Outlook Express gurus here who have some ideas.

Here’s the system: Win98SE, adequate disk storage, 384KB RAM, old but perfectly running system AFAIK. There are no anti-virus scanners on the system, and there are no viruses running (take my word for it!). Malware is kept to a minimum with frequent Spybot scans. System is lean & mean with only essential background programs in the startup.

OE frequently balks or crashes when many programs are open, but works OK upon reboot. There are about two dozen files with mail stored in the default mail folder.

Upon opening OE this morning, I got the “There are no items to view” message when the INBOX was selected. Examining the folder where all mail data is stored showed a 300MB INBOX.DBX and an INBOX.DBT of about the same size. Properties of INBOX (in OE) show 0 records even tho the file size is 300MB.

I think the .DBT file is a kind of backup or working file. I deleted it to make space (probably a mistake in retrospect, but space is at a premium). I copied the DBX file to a safe place, deleted it in the mail folder, and also deleted the FOLDERS.DBX file which I think stores index data & pointers for all mail folders.

Opening OE caused a recreation of FOLDERS.DBX and reduced the size of INBOX.DBX to very small. OE showed it to be empty.

At the system level, I replaced the empty INBOX.DBX with the 300MB backup copy and re-entered OE. No change.

It seems like OE is ignoring the INBOX file size and reading some internal size and/or pointer that says the file is empty. MS Knowledge Base seems to approve of my technique to import a DBX file by copying to the mail folder, as there is no import function in OE.

System cleanup and scandisk has been performed with no errors.

Any ideas how I can recover the data in the INBOX file? I can restore from a backup of about a month ago, but I’d prefer not to lose a month’s worth of mail if I can avoid it.

Edited to add: This is Outlook Express 6.

2

Did you make a copy of folders.dbx as well? If so, put it back and try File, Folder, Compact All Folders. If not, delete the new folders.dbx and restart OE with the bad inbox.dbx in place, then compact all.

If that doesn’t work give DBXtract a try.

3

Compacting folders with either version of FOLDERS.DBX (original or recreated) results in a INBOX with no entries and a file size of the minmium length. Obviously compacting is reading the same data size as properties and the display routine.

Thanks. I’ll take a look. So far, all I’ve found is not-cheap programs for DBX recovery and one free one from Russia that I am suspicious about.

4

From your description it doesn’t sound like you restarted OE with no folders.dbx and with the 300MB inbox in place. When OE is started without folders.dbx it will reindex the inbox and create a new folders.dbx. So if the original folders.dbx was bad and you recreated it on an empty inbox, then copied the old inbox back, you didn’t reindex the old inbox.

5

I tried these combinations:

Original (probably corrupted) INBOX.DBX, original FOLDERS.DBX. Open OE, Inbox is empty and the properties shows 0 entries. Compact all folders, no change inside OE (still 0 entries) but INBOX.DBX file size at the system level shows at minimum (about 47K, IIRC).

Replacing INBOX.DBX and removing FOLDERS.DBX, I opened OE. Inbox shows no entries, properties say 0. Compact folders, no change in OE, INBOX file size reduced to minimum again.

Deleted INBOX.DBX and FOLDERS.DBX from main mail folder, opened OE, FOLDERS was re-created and of course INBOX was empty. Attempted to import from copy of INBOX thru OE, but OE says the file I selected (300MB) is either empty, or in use by another app (it isn’t) and it won’t import.

So it looks like OE’s display routine, import routine and folder indexing all read the same (wrong, in this case) data and interpret 10,000 emails in a 300MB file as none.

I’m trying the DBXtract program you suggested. It looks like it may take a few hours. It’s up to pass 2/19 after 15 minutes and has found 1100 emails. All I can see is the headers as they go by, but they look legitimate. The only problem is I will have to re-incorporate each email, which is being saved as a separate .EML file, into an OE folder if I want to access the whole batch by conventional OE means. Instructions are provided with the DBXtract program.

So let’s see what happens after an hour or so. I appreciate your recommendation for a program that isn’t hosted in Russia and doesn’t cost an arm and leg (US$9).