If you moved all of the mail out of the Inbox, you don't need to rename it.
Close OE and delete it and when you open OE a new empty Inbox is waiting for
you. As far as moving the messages back into the Inbox.....

General precautions for Outlook Express:

Do not archive mail in the Inbox or Sent Items. Create your own user defined
folders and move the messages you wish to save to them. Empty Deleted Items
folder daily. Although dbx files have a theoretical capacity of 2GB, I
recommend about a 300MB max for less chance of corruption.

Information about the maximum file size of the .dbx files that are used by
Outlook Express:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=903095

After you are done, follow up by compacting your folders manually while
working *offline* and do it often.

Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are
open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the
Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything until
the compacting is completed.

Turn off e-mail scanning in your anti-virus program. It is a redundant layer
of protection that eats up CPUs and causes a multitude of problems such as
time-outs and account setting changes. Your up-to-date A/V program will
continue to protect you sufficiently. For more, see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3

In Tools | Options | Maintenance: Uncheck Compact messages in background and
leave it unchecked. {N/A if running XP/SP2}.

And backup often.

Outlook Express Quick Backup (OEQB Freeware)
http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"GT" wrote in message
...
Bruce's solution works, I just renamed the inbox.dbf after moving
everything
from the inbox into a temporay folder I created, closed OE and renamed the
inbox.dbf to inbox.old, restarted OE and moved all the real mail back inot
the inbox and it worked fine.

"Gen Joerger" wrote:

Hi - I was working and had OE open when we had an unexpected power
outage.
When the power came back, I rebooted and reopened OE. I clicked on one
of
the new messages in my inbox and OE hung up and stopped responding. No
problem with any other messages, but now I can't get rid of this one.
I'm
assuming it was coming in just as the power went out and probably got
corrupted. I've tried everything I could think of, and everything I
could
find online, but I cannot delete this message -- as soon as I touch it in
any
way, OE crashes. Can anyone help with this?