The two most common reasons for what you describe is disruption of the
compacting process, (never touch anything until it's finished), or bloated
folders. More on that below.

Why does OE insist on compacting folders when I close it?:
http://www.insideoe.com/faqs/why.htm#compact

Why Mail Disappears:
http://www.insideoe.com/problems/bugs.htm#mailgone

About File Corruption:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/...orruption.mspx

Recovery tools:

If you are using a fully patched version of XP/SP2, see:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918069/en-us
(This is the patch you just downloaded).

If not:

DBXpress run in Disk Mode is the best chance to recover messages:
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

And see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#4

A general warning if you don't want to lose your messages in the futu

Do not archive mail in default OE folders. They will eventually become
corrupted. Create your own user defined folders for storing mail and move
your mail to them. Empty Deleted Items folder regularly. Keep user created
folders under 100MB, and Default folders as empty as is feasible.

And backup often.

Backup and Resto

http://www.insideoutlookexpress.com/backup/

http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx

http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx
--
Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Eric Wang" wrote in message
...
OE6 crashed while compacting my folders.
After restarting, I found that:
a) 942 .dbx files were truncated to the empty size (59 or 137 KB)
b) 176 .dbx files remained the same size, but were trashed to all-00 hex
bytes
c) 385 .dbx files survived OK

OE6 treats both (a) and (b) folders as having 0 messages.

I have since found KB918069/918766. Comparing my DLL versions, I see that
I
did _not_ have this update, on either of my 2 PCs. Hence, it must be
something that Windows Update doesn't automatically install. (I've since
installed it, but that's too late to help.)

So OE6 lost 75% of my e-mail folders, dating back 12 years.
How can I restore these .dbx files?
--
Eric