Outlook Express just deleted all my e-mails

[SyrupFairy]

Last night when i was closing my Outlook Express it offered to compact messages to free up disk space, so i did. I've done this before with no hassle. So i did this - then shut my computer down. Today when i load up Outlook Express, all my 1000s of e-mails are gone. Nothing in any folder.

I'm totally gutted. WTF happened??!

 

[goombawaho]

If you're using Windows XP SP2, check your Recycle Bin. OE now makes a copy of all your DBX (OE Folder) files and puts them in the trash BEFORE it does the compacting.

Hopefully you can find them there named XXX.bak. Now identify your OE store folder (Open OE, TOOLS, OPTIONS, MAINTENANCE, Store Folder). Now close OE and MOVE (cut) all those files out to somewhere for safe keeping. Restore all the *.bak files from recycle bin and they should go into the Store Folder. Go to Store Folder and rename them from XXX.bak to XXX.dbx.

I would then make another copy of these and put them somewhere else for safe keeping because you don't know what will happen when you fire up OE. It may detect corruption and try to fix some of the files. You want a pristine copy before you let OE mess with your files.

Now try to restart OE. You may have some corruption that we'll have to deal with. Report what happens after doing this procedure.