Inbox contents simply vanished

Larry wrote:
| Sounds like you got major corruption during the lockup/bad shutdown.
|
| Yes, the computer froze, I restarted by pressing the external restart
| button on the tower, and after that is when the Inbox contents were
| missing.
|
| Did you check for *.chk files as Franc suggested?
|
| I don't see a Franc in this thread, and don't remember anything about
| .chk files.

I see Zabcar's post below. If auto-Scandisk ran during the boot after
your crash, it may have put File.chk files in the C: directory. Open
those in Notepad for anything readable.

Other than that, one of these may recover your Input.dbx file. But the
longer you use the computer, the less likely you will get a deleted file
back. After Delete, the space occupied by the file can freely be used by
the system. As soon as something overwrites it, the file is truly gone.
Also, running a Defrag (but not a Scandisk) appears to make them truly
disappear.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...s/homepage.htm
Recover For All
http://hccweb1.bai.ne.jp/~hcj58401/ Undelete
http://www.briggsoft.com/dsnoop.htm DSnoop Undelete
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm Undelete
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html Restoration
http://aumha.org/downloads/restoration.exe Also Restoration

The one I use is Restoration. It's showing me old stuff in my store
right now. Some of them don't have their full name or the file type
..dbx, but seem recognisable.

| But from what you say, it sounds as though the e-mails are basically
| lost. It's not a terrible disaster.

I've lost stuff too, but I think it was from other causes. I suspect I
wiped out an Inbox once by a misapplied message rule meant to delete
older messages from this newsgroup only. Also, I may have hit the delete
key & wiped out a whole newsgroup. Finally, I intentionally deleted what
I thought was an empty .dbx-- but it was just my View menu settings at
fault! Still, it is good to do as the others have said to avoid true
corruption.

| Larry
|
|
|
| "MEB" meb@not wrote in message
| ...
|
| "Larry" wrote in message
| ...
| | Hi, sorry I didn't get back sooner.
| |
| | I downloaded OE Reader as recommended, browsed to the Inbox.dbx
| | file (which I had renamed XXX.dbx and placed on the Desktop), and
| | opened it. Message said:
| |
| | "File does not contain any message."
| |
| | Yet the file's size is 1.24 MB.
| |
| | Go figure.
| |
| | Larry
| |
|
| Sounds like you got major corruption during the lockup/bad shutdown.
|
| Did you check for *.chk files as Franc suggested?
|
| You can try to open that file [or others you might find] with a code
| capable editor or hex editor and maybe recover some of the text {a
| tedious task}.
|
| Of course, from now on, follow the normal procedure of moving from
| the inbox to some other folder, and exporting the most important to
| text or eml files.
|
| BTW: 98SE doesn't crash all that often if everything is setup
| properly, so you might want to diagnose WHY your system seems to
| crash alot.
|
| --
| MEB http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com
| --
| _________
|
|
| |
| |
| |
| | "bobster" wrote in message
| | ...
| | Try this. It's the successor to MiTec OE view. I use it and it
| | works fine for me.
| |
| | http://www.snapfiles.com/get/dbxviewer.html
| |
| | "Larry" wrote in message
| | ...
| | I haven't been following this thread but this confuses me.
| | How did
| you
| | determine the size of it when it was 400KB? And when it was
| | 1.24 MB?
| |
| | By seeing the size of the Inbox.dbx file in Windows Explorer.
| |
| | 2. Get any of the many programs to extract messages from
| | .dbx
| files
| | and
| | run
| | it
| |
| | I did try OE Extract and it doesn't do anything and provides no
| | instructions, so I guess one of the nonfreeware apps is next.
| |
| |
| | "dadiOH" wrote in message
| | ...
| | Larry wrote:
| | Strange things going on (see below), but I think the problem
| | may be solvable.
| |
| | 1. The Inbox, prior to the problem, would have been around
| | 80 or 90 MB. As I said, my procedure is to let it build up
| | for a few weeks and then move a lot of it into a custom
| | folder. But after the problem occurred, the Inbox was 130
| | KB. After I received e-mails since this morning, it went up
| | to about 400 KB.
| |
| | 2. But here's the strange thing: just now I looked again,
| | and the only Inbox.dbx in the OE folder has 1.24 MB!!! So
| | somehow it's returned.
| |
| | I haven't been following this thread but this confuses me.
| | How did you determine the size of it when it was 400KB? And
| | when it was 1.24 MB? ________________
| |
| | 3. Yet the Inbox in the OE application is still just the
| | e-mails received since this morning.
| |
| | Because it is screwed up. That is, whatever methodology used
| | to determine messages start/end and/or count is wrong. Like a
| | file that has its EOF in the wrong place/
| | __________________
| |
| | This is what I'd do...
| |
| | 1. Save a copy of Inbox.dbx somewhere
| |
| | 2. Get any of the many programs to extract messages from .dbx
| | files and run it
| |
| | 3. If it is successful in getting your messages, save them as
| | MAIL ( i.e., *.eml - separate, discrete messages) in a folder
| | on your desktop.
| |
| | If not successful, forget what follows.
| |
| | 4. Delete Inbox.dbx using Explorer
| |
| | 5. Open OE and display its Inbox - which should now be empty
| |
| | 6. Select all the recovered email messages in your temporary
| | desktop folder and drag them to the OE pane where they would
| | normally be displayed.
| |
| | 7. Close OE
| |
| | dadiOH

--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR

On 3ÔÂ26ÈÕ, ÏÂÎç1ʱ55·Ö, "Larry" wrote:
In OE 6, Windows 98, the entire contents of the Inbox just vanished after
restarting computer. There were about 4 weeks of e-mail in there.

Other folders do not seem to be affected.

I looked in theOutlook Expressfolder on my hard drive, and the Inbox file
at this address:

C:\WINDOWS\Application
Data\Identities\{9226D728-E116-11DA-8D61-00045A5FABE0}\Microsoft\OutlookExpress

was down to something like 130 KB, containing just a lot of unreadable code.

I normally move Inbox contents to other folders regularly to keep Inbox from
getting too large.

I've never seen anything like this. The contents of a huge file simply
vanishing.

Hi,
I know a tool ,some friends suggest me use it to repair outlook
express, if the dbx file is corrupt , i don't know whether it can
work, but I think you can have a try! http://www.datanumen.com/aoer/

Alen