Bill

If only newsgroups are compacted it would seem you are selecting Tools,
Options, Maintenance. CleanUp Now, Compact. That is not what Bruce was
recommending.


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Bill Bradshaw wrote:
Bruce Hagen wrote:
Head this and it should reduce the chance of a reoccurrence.

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

"Bill Bradshaw" wrote in message
...
I built a new identity and it finally compacted after stopping a
couple of times. Hopefully maybe it will now start workingr
reliably.

I follow all the suggestions at 903095 already. I do not keep
anything in my inbox, send, delete, etc. I do a manual compact
everday while offline and the only thing compacted are the news
groups and I only keep 12 days worth of message in those folders (the
largest newsgroup file is 700 kB). One dbx file in my email section
is 57 mB. So it is not file size. This is really strange.
Fortunately my saved emails are not affected and it just means I have
to re-download 12 days of the messages in the newgroup(s) that are
impacted by the compacting problem. I also keep my messages in a
subdirectory on partition E so they are not mixed in with alot of
other stuff.