OE6 timewarp mystery - can anyone help???

a very strange thing happened to me yesterday. i had to reinstall windows
2000p and in order not lose all emails on OE6, i backed up the "identities"
folder and copied its contents across to the newly created "identities"
folder once the reinstall was complete.

i found to my amazement when i looked last night that within the folder in
the backed up version all of the folders are dated 15 may 09, but the *.dbx
files are all dated 18 october 2008????? how did that happen?? consequently
all emails since 18 october 08 are not showing.

can anyone throw any light on what could have happened here and whether
there is anything i could do to retrieve them? if you can, thanks a million.
best regards,
malcolm