Need your help. First the situation:

Saturday late morning, as I am preparing to leave, I leave my computer while
it begins compacting my Outlook Express. I clicked yes on an automatic
prompt box and left the computer alone until I came back in the evening.

When I get back as I am scanning my e-mail folders, I notice that my Sent
e-mails in my Sent folder from 2/13//2006 t0 11/17/2006 have disappeared or
been deleted. FYI: my stored sent e-mails go all the way back to 8/31/2002
when I first bought this computer.

Have done two System Restores to previous safe dates to no avail. It does
not affect files obviously. Before when I used the Go Back from Norton, I
could easily revert back and get them all back. Since I do not use Norton
anymore, what Microsoft program will allow me to do a retrieval?

Questions:
1. How do I retrieve these e-mails? They are the most important to me
because they contain a lot of needed information.

2. How did it choose (if it did) a specific time frame (2/13//2006 t0
11/17/2006) from a specific folder (Sent)???? I've never seen this before.

Please advise. Thank you in a advance.