A couple of things to try but others may has additional.

Since you can open OE, go to Tools | Options |Maintenance tab
Press the Store Folders button and note the location of the message stores.

Open Windows Explorer.
Create a new folder and name it Old Mail

If you have hidden files and folders still hidden, go into Explorer's Tools
| Folder Options | Views tab
Select "Show all files..."
Uncheck "Hide file extensions for known file types"
Click Apply then OK


Go to the folder you found in the Store Folders dialog.
Copy all the DBX files to the C:\Old Mail folder.

Now you have a backup of the files.

Now, switch Explorer to Details view.
How large are the DBX files, especially the Inbox.dbx file.

If it's 1 gig or over you may have some serious corruption which may require
additional software to recover.

From OE:
File | Folders | Work Offline
File | Folders | Compact All

Once compacted, restart.
If you get an error, move the error message box to the right or left and see
which folder it was erroring on.

If it's Folders.dbx, Close OE then rename the Folders.dbx file in the folder
to Folders.old then restart OE.

A new Folders.dbx file will be rebuilt.


If that doesn't solve it, close OE and delete all the DBX files in the
current message store folder. You do have a backup you can use for import.

Restart OE
new and empty files will be created.

Now, File | Import | Messages | Microsoft Outlook Express 6 | Import mail
from an OE6 store directory.
Press Browse to navigate to the C:\Old Mail folder
Select it to highlight it, then press OK and finish up the import.

If nothing imports, see DBXtract at http://www.oehelp.com



DIV"Soosi" > wrote in
message .../DIV
OE6 either won't open at all and I get the following message or it opens but
the message comes up when I try and open an email (new, old, sent, etc) -
if
the inbox is empty the message doesn't come up until I try and read
something. This has been happening for a while. Sometimes OE will work
fine. Other times I get the message, reboot and then it works. Sometimes
it
takes a few tries. At the moment, I can't get OE to open at all.

I have tried turning off Norton - sometimes it helps, sometimes not.

Here's the message (I have gotten this message in Internet Explorer a few
times):

Outlook Express has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are
sorry
for the inconvenience.

AppName: msimn.exe AppVer: 6.0.2900.2180 ModName: msoert2.dll
ModVer: 6.0.2900.2180 Offset: 0000a27b