:o :o
Hi all.
This one has me quite puzzled, in Jan 2010 i opened my e-mails and found that ALL of my e-mails, in box out box folders everything had gone!!!
Everything is working fine on the e-mail now as regards saving and sending etc, but I cannot find all of my saved e-mails anywhere.
Anyone got any ideas.
I regularly use C Cleaner to keep everything clear of clutter and have never had a problem, and I do regular ‘housekeeping’ by using avast scanner and spybot, I have had no warning, alerts or any indication that something has got into my system.
Would appreciate any ideas.
Many thanks.
You don’t say what your email program is ?
If you have a crash, etc. the database file that stores email folders (that is what an email folders is, just a single file) and if this gets corrupted then the email client will build a new inbox, outbox, etc. To all intents and purposes it looks like your email is gone as the email folders are empty.
You could check where the email files are stored and see if there is something like inbox(2).dbx, or something like that etc. That would indicate this is a replacement for the original which may well still be there, so you may be able to find tools that can recover emails from corrupt database files.
It isn’t advisable to use your inbox for general email storage as this folder is the one most likely to be open and if any crash/power glitch, etc. the most likely to get corrupted. Treat it as a pending tray like on a desk and when you have read the email and dealt with it, move it to another folder appropriate to its category, personal, sport, work, etc.
Outside of that advice there is little else I can suggest.
Hi DavidR.
Thanks for your reply, sorry I didn’t tell you, my email is outlook express.
I have checked everything in all boxes, I do keep separate emails in new folders as they come in, as some are regular subjects, so i drop them in a particular folder.
But all those have gone also, its like the email has started up again from scratch!
Is there anywhere I could go in the hard drive to look and find them or would a system restore be any good?
Thanks again.
Then do a search for files with a file type of .dbx in windows explorer, that will show where your email folders/database files are stored. Then hopefully you will see duplicates of those empty folders, certainly for the default folders, inbox, outbox, sent items and deleted items, etc.
If there are duplicates, you will notice (1) or (2) or inbox2,dbx, etc. and it is that one which is the one displayed in OE when you open it. You should also notice the file sizes, huge for old ones with lots of emails in them and much smaller for those newly created.
Fortunately there are programs that can recover emails from corrupt email database files as OE was so big a user base. Try a google search for “recover email from outlook express corrupt dbx file” without the quotes and see what that brings.
Hi Sorry to be late in replying.
I am having difficulty in understanding what I need to do to try to find the duplicate files.
If you could give me a running order of the process I need to follow it would be very much appreciated.
Thank you. 
I’m sorry but I don’t really know of an easier way to break this down (the above I though would have been enough to point you in the right direction):
Search for the location of the .dbx files
Order the results in alphabetic order and then you will see if there are any duplicates other than (1) or 2 or some other figure after the first part of the file name. The original (and probable corrupt file would be the one with no number after the first part of the file name, that however should be the oldest file.
Find the oldest file by last modified and try to recover emails from within it.
You first have to have found said tools (google) and run the tool against the suspect corrupt .dbx folder you found in your search.
I can’t help you with running to tools as I have never had to uses them, they are a last resort and may not be able to do much. I have always backed up my email .dbx files, so this isn’t necessary.