Last night (1/29/06) OE asked if I wanted to compact my messages to free up
space. I allowed it to and it took 1-1.5 hours. Today, every message in my
Inbox from 12/13/05 - 1/29/06 is gone, deleted, not be found anywhere on my
computer. Microsoft Service tells me that OE's compaction process randomly
deletes emails.

This is not compaction, this is deletion. Any idiot can delete their own
emails when they choose to do so. Microsoft tells me that they know that the
random deletion is a problem and that the research department has been
working on this for some time. This is totally unbelievable. I can't believe
that Microsoft hasn't issed a service pack to disable the compaction process
if what happened to me is even possible they KNEW it.

The customer help department called it random deletion. In reality it was
every email that I had received (and not previously deleted) for the past 1.5
months.

One and a half hours? If it took that long, your folders were bloated, and
you haven't compacted often enough. It shouldn't take more that one and a
half minutes. I'm surprised OE worked at all.

With XP/SP2, Outlook Express prompts you to compact your folders after 100
closings which you should do. Lost mail is usually caused by disrupting the
compacting process, (such as turning off the computer before it has
finished), or having very bloated folders.

When you see the compact option, and select OK, and never touch anything
until
it has completed. A power change can cause you to lose mail also. If you
checked the Do not show me this again, OE will compact without you knowing.
If this is the case, post back and I'll tell you how to replace the prompt.

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

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

Recovery tool, (if the messages are still there):

DBXpress is the best chance of recovery when run in disk mode:
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

And this is a very good option for the futu

Steve Cochran has added a button in his new version of OE Tool that will not
only Compact All Folders, but at the same time, resets the "Compact Check
Count" to zero whenever you compact manually. You will see the prompt again
if you do not compact before 100 closings.

http://www.oehelp.com/OETool/

It is still advised to check Work Offline before you compact.

A general warning to avoid losing mail 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.

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~

"David McGoldrick" wrote in
message ...
Last night (1/29/06) OE asked if I wanted to compact my messages to free
up
space. I allowed it to and it took 1-1.5 hours. Today, every message in my
Inbox from 12/13/05 - 1/29/06 is gone, deleted, not be found anywhere on
my
computer. Microsoft Service tells me that OE's compaction process randomly
deletes emails.

This is not compaction, this is deletion. Any idiot can delete their own
emails when they choose to do so. Microsoft tells me that they know that
the
random deletion is a problem and that the research department has been
working on this for some time. This is totally unbelievable. I can't
believe
that Microsoft hasn't issed a service pack to disable the compaction
process
if what happened to me is even possible they KNEW it.

The customer help department called it random deletion. In reality it was
every email that I had received (and not previously deleted) for the past
1.5
months.

Why it happens:

http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/probl...s.htm#mailgone
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/...orruption.mspx

Recovering data: http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#4
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DBXtract
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/Default.aspx

DBXtend (additional functionality)
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtend/Default.aspx

DBXpress (faster, more powerful, with even greater functionality)
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

OEX (OE Enhancement Program)
http://www.oehelp.com/OEX/Default.aspx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Avoid Such Corruption in Futu

- Don't use Inbox or Sent Items to archive messages. Move them to local
folders created for this purpose.

- Empty Deleted Items folder daily.

- Disable Background Compacting [N/A in SP2] and frequently perform a manual
compact of all OE folders while "working offline". More at
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/files/maintain.htm.

- WinXP SP2 only: Do not shut down your machine while Windows is
automatically compacting your message store.

- Your anti-virus application's email scanning feature can also cause such
corruption. Disable it. It provides no additional protection.

--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE, Shell/User, Security), Aumha.org VSOP, DTS-L.org

David McGoldrick wrote:
Last night (1/29/06) OE asked if I wanted to compact my messages to free
up space. I allowed it to and it took 1-1.5 hours. Today, every message
in my Inbox from 12/13/05 - 1/29/06 is gone, deleted, not be found
anywhere on my computer. Microsoft Service tells me that OE's compaction
process randomly deletes emails.

This is not compaction, this is deletion. Any idiot can delete their own
emails when they choose to do so. Microsoft tells me that they know that
the random deletion is a problem and that the research department has been
working on this for some time. This is totally unbelievable. I can't
believe that Microsoft hasn't issed a service pack to disable the
compaction process if what happened to me is even possible they KNEW it.

The customer help department called it random deletion. In reality it was
every email that I had received (and not previously deleted) for the past
1.5 months.

Its a huge issue that the MVPs have been fighting for years.

In addition to what Bear and Bruce posted, the only recovery technique that
may work at the moment is DBXpress. OE has a backup of the dbx file before
it does the "compaction", and once the compaction has done its damage, then
that backup is deleted. Since the messages in the backup are still on the
hard drive disk clusters when the file is deleted, DBXpress can go in and
read the entire hard drive and if the clusters haven't been overwritten, it
will recover the messages. It has been successful for many people, I'm
happy to say. www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/ And as I indicated, its the only
program that has this extract from disk feature.

/enough of today's plug G)

But for the future make sure you do points 2 and 3 he
www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx and backup frequently because this is a huge
problem for OE users.

steve

MS-MVP
Windows OE / WinMail

"David McGoldrick" wrote in
message ...
Last night (1/29/06) OE asked if I wanted to compact my messages to free
up
space. I allowed it to and it took 1-1.5 hours. Today, every message in my
Inbox from 12/13/05 - 1/29/06 is gone, deleted, not be found anywhere on
my
computer. Microsoft Service tells me that OE's compaction process randomly
deletes emails.

This is not compaction, this is deletion. Any idiot can delete their own
emails when they choose to do so. Microsoft tells me that they know that
the
random deletion is a problem and that the research department has been
working on this for some time. This is totally unbelievable. I can't
believe
that Microsoft hasn't issed a service pack to disable the compaction
process
if what happened to me is even possible they KNEW it.

The customer help department called it random deletion. In reality it was
every email that I had received (and not previously deleted) for the past
1.5
months.