Assuming WinXP SP3 is installed...

See this June 2008 discussion about this WinXP SP3-specific problem:
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...d35fbfa457fd6f

For reference, here's a current list of items known to cause this behavior
(which is NOT being seen by the vast majority of OE users) in "most often
seen" order

• Nero plug-in(s) including Nero Scout*;
• Windows (Desktop) Search is installed
[FIX: Uninstall the application or CONTROL PANEL | INDEXING OPTIONS |
MODIFY | Clear the check box for Outlook Express files (i.e., EML, NWS, &
DBX files)];
• IBM Rapid Access keyboard (driver) RAKDLL.DLL;
• Various & sundry anti-virus applications (including Norton);
• Various & sundry anti-spyware applications;
• Various & sundry third-party firewalls;
• Any/all of the above running when WinXP SP3 was installed;
• Disk defragmentation, need for;
• Using Visual Basic DoCmd.SendObject command to create an email;
• Using any number third-party applications (e.g., accounting software;
FileMaker 6) to send emails by via Outlook Express;
• MailWasher; and/or
• Programatically opening EML files while OE is closed (e.g., creating a
New Message via Address Book).

===============
* IN RE Nero Scout, see Item 2.3 on page 8 he
ftp://ftp6.nero.com/user_guides/nero...oScout_Enu.pdf

Also see http://www.nero.com/eng/support-faq.html?s=sub&t=Scout

--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Client - since 2002

pinger wrote:
For the last month or so, OE6 insists that I compact several times a day.
I'm happy to say that I am not going into OE several hundred times daily
which would normally trigger such activity. I dutifully let the
compacting
process run and disappear by itself. As a hint of something that might be
an indication of a problem is that about half way though I get a "stop"
stating that there is an OE file open. There isn't. When I close the
dropdown, the process finishes. A few minutes later...perhaps...it wants
to go through the whole process again. Frankly, it getting to be quite an
annoyance. When I click cancel....maybe sixty seconds later it's there
again, prompting.

Additionally, after reading a lot of posts on the subject of compacting,
it's clear that there are a lot of issues regarding the possible loss of
old
emails. I have several thousand emails on my machine and really don't
want
them going anywhere. What is the conventional thinking on seeing that
they
aren't lost?