Repair Outlook Express Inbox?

September 10, 2005 1:34 PM

Outlook Express v 6.00.2800.1123 hosed my inbox and all folders therein. Yeah, I know, use crappy software, reap crap, but I Want My EMails. Still have drafts, sent and deleted. Lots of tools to buy online, looking for one that's reliable, preferably free.
posted by theora55 to computers & internet (7 comments total)

oh yeah. Windows 2000.
posted by theora55 at 1:43 PM on September 10, 2005

Post repair: Mozilla Thunderbird

Sorry, I have no advice on repairing the corrupted mailboxes. Maybe a ($) call to Microsoft will help more than unknown tools.
posted by Kickstart70 at 2:11 PM on September 10, 2005

How do you mean 'hosed'?

Are the files still present, and just corrupt? Or have they been deleted altogether?

I second the Thunderbird recommendation.
posted by Brian James at 3:03 PM on September 10, 2005

How about you use whatever program that you need to.

I suggest to trying going through control panel and do a reinstall and repair. There may also be a way to do this through the help menu as wel.
posted by corpse at 3:23 PM on September 10, 2005

The .dbx files for my inbox and its subfolders are still there in C:\Documents and Settings\t55\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{id}\Microsoft\Outlook Express. File sizes roughly appropriate to sizes of vanished email folders. Reinstalling OE generally creates a new inbox. I see no way to import the inbox. I suspect file corruption.
posted by theora55 at 3:35 PM on September 10, 2005

In the recent past on OE 6.0.something I've copied the .dbx files from one {id} to another and in the new id they were accessible just fine. The trick is to first create empty mailboxes in the target id with the same names as in the old id (Inbox, Sent, etc are created for you when you make the new identity, of course.) Give it a try. MAKE COPIES BEFORE EXPERIMENTING.

Failing that, it's possible that Thunderbird's "Import from OE" will be able to get the mail from the bad OE mailboxes. TB is a nice mailreader btw; I switched a few months ago at work.
posted by anadem at 4:09 PM on September 10, 2005

Good timing on this question for me -- my Thunderbird setup is similarly hosed following a system crash due to bad hardware. TB just hangs when it starts up, using 99% of the CPU. I've copied my mail folders and was just about to reinstall TB. Do any of the experts in this thread have any suggestions?
posted by fuzz at 2:33 AM on September 11, 2005