I was just called in to help with a problem with lost messages in 
Outlook Express 6 folders.

When I look at the DBX files for folders that the user says are 
supposed to have messages, I see that the DBX file is fairly large 
(500KB or so which might correspond to its "real" size with messages) 
but that the contents of the file is almost all zeros.  DBX recovery 
programs report there are no messages to be recovered.

There are also sections of the Deleted items folder (from June 5-25 
approximately) where the subject name is shown for messages but 
selecting the message results in a "message unavailable while offline" 
message (POP3 protocol is used).  Recovery programs simply skip those 
messages.

The Sent folder contains 7736 messages and the Deleted Items folder has 
about 5800 messages.  All other folders, including the apparently wiped 
ones, are much smaller.

Client unfortunately was not maintaining rolling backups so has only a 
current backup, and data on that backup is also damaged.

Hard drive diagnostics, scandisk, and anti-virus showed no problems 
(though they hadn't run a full scan since 4/10).

Can anyone suggest what happened?  Any magic cures are also welcome!  
:-)

Thanks.

Guy

Did he compact?? Checked the recycle Bin for *.bak files ?

-- 
Peter

Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.

"Guy Scharf"  wrote in message news:Xns9AD2978C4ED77guyspamcopnet@216.196.97.142...
>I was just called in to help with a problem with lost messages in 
> Outlook Express 6 folders.
> 
> When I look at the DBX files for folders that the user says are 
> supposed to have messages, I see that the DBX file is fairly large 
> (500KB or so which might correspond to its "real" size with messages) 
> but that the contents of the file is almost all zeros.  DBX recovery 
> programs report there are no messages to be recovered.
> 
> There are also sections of the Deleted items folder (from June 5-25 
> approximately) where the subject name is shown for messages but 
> selecting the message results in a "message unavailable while offline" > message (POP3 protocol is used).  Recovery programs simply skip those 
> messages.
> 
> The Sent folder contains 7736 messages and the Deleted Items folder has 
> about 5800 messages.  All other folders, including the apparently wiped 
> ones, are much smaller.
> 
> Client unfortunately was not maintaining rolling backups so has only a > current backup, and data on that backup is also damaged.
> 
> Hard drive diagnostics, scandisk, and anti-virus showed no problems 
> (though they hadn't run a full scan since 4/10).
> 
> Can anyone suggest what happened?  Any magic cures are also welcome!  
> :-)
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Guy

"Peter Foldes"  wrote:

> Did he compact?? Checked the recycle Bin for *.bak files ?

Maybe.  There are lots of .BAK files in the recycle bin, with names 
like DC3562.BAK.  When I look at them with a hex editor, they look like 
DBX files.  And the dates on those files match are in the range of 
times that she reported that she saw messages missing (a whole month 
ago--nothing like calling for help in a timely fashion ;-)).

Now I'm looking at the contents of RECYCLER directory in an Acronis 
True Image backup of the C: drive, not directly into the Recycle Bin 
from the desktop.  I made that backup upon receipt of the computer.  
The Recycle Bin on the current version of the drive doesn't have an 
.BAK files.  Probably other changes I made to the computer flushed out 
anything in the recycle bin before.

How can I restore these as DBX files to OE6, given that I can't work 
through the recycle bin directly?

Guy

"Peter Foldes"  wrote:

> Did he compact?? Checked the recycle Bin for *.bak files ?

I've looked at INFO2 and confirmed that the files are mailbox files.  I 
can rename the .BAK files to the proper .DBX name easily enough, then 
copy them to the OE store folder.  I'll use slightly modified names so 
they don't overwrite the most recent DBX files.  Will that be enough?

Shouldn't that be 500MB?
Your post is 2KB, so 500KB would only be 250 messages.

How do you know that a dbx file is almost all zeros?
What program are you using to view the dbx file?
-- 
Ronald Sommer

"Guy Scharf"  wrote in message 
news:Xns9AD2978C4ED77guyspamcopnet@216.196.97.142...
> I was just called in to help with a problem with lost messages in
> Outlook Express 6 folders.
>
> When I look at the DBX files for folders that the user says are
> supposed to have messages, I see that the DBX file is fairly large
> (500KB or so which might correspond to its "real" size with messages)
> but that the contents of the file is almost all zeros.  DBX recovery
> programs report there are no messages to be recovered.
>
> There are also sections of the Deleted items folder (from June 5-25
> approximately) where the subject name is shown for messages but
> selecting the message results in a "message unavailable while offline"
> message (POP3 protocol is used).  Recovery programs simply skip those
> messages.
>
> The Sent folder contains 7736 messages and the Deleted Items folder has
> about 5800 messages.  All other folders, including the apparently wiped
> ones, are much smaller.
>
> Client unfortunately was not maintaining rolling backups so has only a
> current backup, and data on that backup is also damaged.
>
> Hard drive diagnostics, scandisk, and anti-virus showed no problems
> (though they hadn't run a full scan since 4/10).
>
> Can anyone suggest what happened?  Any magic cures are also welcome!
> :-)
>
> Thanks.
>
> Guy

Why it happens:

http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/problems/bugs.htm#mailgone
   http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx

Recovering the missing data: http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx (#2 and #4) 
and http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=918069 (see Notes section under 
Resolution)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DBXpress (faster, more powerful, with even greater functionality)
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Avoiding Such Corruption in Future:

- 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 [not available in SP2] and frequently 
perform a manual compact of all OE folders while "working offline".  More at 
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm

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

- Disable email scanning by your anti-virus application.  It can cause 
corruption (i.e., loss of messages), it provides no additional protection, 
and even Symantec says it's not necessary:

<QP>
Disabling Email Scanning does not leave you unprotected against viruses that 
are distributed as email attachments. Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect scans 
incoming files as they are saved to your hard drive, including email and 
email attachments. Email Scanning is just another layer on top of this. To 
make sure that Auto-Protect is providing the maximum protection, keep 
Auto-Protect enabled and run LiveUpdate regularly to ensure that you have 
the most recent virus definitions.
</QP>
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/docid/2002111812533106

-- 
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Desktop Experience - since 2002
AumHa VSOP & Admin http://aumha.net
DTS-L http://dts-l.net/

Guy Scharf wrote:
> I was just called in to help with a problem with lost messages in
> Outlook Express 6 folders.
>
> When I look at the DBX files for folders that the user says are
> supposed to have messages, I see that the DBX file is fairly large
> (500KB or so which might correspond to its "real" size with messages)
> but that the contents of the file is almost all zeros.  DBX recovery
> programs report there are no messages to be recovered.
>
> There are also sections of the Deleted items folder (from June 5-25
> approximately) where the subject name is shown for messages but
> selecting the message results in a "message unavailable while offline"
> message (POP3 protocol is used).  Recovery programs simply skip those
> messages.
>
> The Sent folder contains 7736 messages and the Deleted Items folder has
> about 5800 messages.  All other folders, including the apparently wiped
> ones, are much smaller.
>
> Client unfortunately was not maintaining rolling backups so has only a
> current backup, and data on that backup is also damaged.
>
> Hard drive diagnostics, scandisk, and anti-virus showed no problems
> (though they hadn't run a full scan since 4/10).
>
> Can anyone suggest what happened?  Any magic cures are also welcome!
> :-)
>
> Thanks.
>
> Guy

"Ron Sommer"  wrote:

> Shouldn't that be 500MB?
> Your post is 2KB, so 500KB would only be 250 messages.

I confused things in my message.  The ones I looked at internally were 
in the 500KB range.  The "fairly large" DBX files are about 800MB, and 
too large to examine in detail.
 
> How do you know that a dbx file is almost all zeros?
> What program are you using to view the dbx file?

I used UltraEdit-32 but any file viewer that will show a file in hex 
would show the same thing.

I have now recovered the files from a backup of the recycle bin.  It's 
going to be a messy process to sort out which files are damaged and 
which are ok, but the messages appear to be there.

Guy

"Peter Foldes"  wrote:

> Did he compact?? Checked the recycle Bin for *.bak files ?

Just wanted to update you that I was able to recover the DBX files from 
the Recycler folder on the backup copy of the drive.

Now it's just a matter of sorting out the folders and messages.

Guy

Generally Good Advice...

But See Below.
-- 
DSH
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
Vires et Honor

"PA Bear [MS MVP]"  wrote in message 
news:Oldq1U43IHA.5088@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...

> Why it happens:
>
> http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/problems/bugs.htm#mailgone
> 
> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx
>
> Recovering the missing data: http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx (#2 and #4) 
> and http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=918069 (see Notes section under 
> Resolution)
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> DBXpress (faster, more powerful, with even greater functionality)
> http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Avoiding Such Corruption in Future:
>
> - 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 [not available in SP2] and frequently 
> perform a manual compact of all OE folders while "working offline".  More 
> at http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm

Compact at LEAST once per day.  I compact about 20 times per day and have 
never had any troubles.

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

Yes, that could prove to be suicidal.

> - Disable email scanning by your anti-virus application.  It can cause 
> corruption (i.e., loss of messages), it provides no additional protection, 
> and even Symantec says it's not necessary:

Hmmmmmm... Do THAT and you get a nasty warning from NIS with a flashing and 
pulsating red light.

I use email scanning -- both incoming and outgoing and have never had any 
problems with DBX file corruption.

> <QP>
> Disabling Email Scanning does not leave you unprotected against viruses 
> that are distributed as email attachments. Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect 
> scans incoming files as they are saved to your hard drive, including email 
> and email attachments. Email Scanning is just another layer on top of 
> this. To make sure that Auto-Protect is providing the maximum protection, 
> keep Auto-Protect enabled and run LiveUpdate regularly to ensure that you 
> have the most recent virus definitions.

Disabling Auto-Protect would indeed be stupid.

> </QP>
> http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/docid/2002111812533106
>
> -- 
> ~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
> MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Desktop Experience - since 2002
> AumHa VSOP & Admin http://aumha.net
> DTS-L http://dts-l.net/
>
> Guy Scharf wrote:

>> I was just called in to help with a problem with lost messages in
>> Outlook Express 6 folders.
>>
>> When I look at the DBX files for folders that the user says are
>> supposed to have messages, I see that the DBX file is fairly large
>> (500KB or so which might correspond to its "real" size with messages)
>> but that the contents of the file is almost all zeros.  DBX recovery
>> programs report there are no messages to be recovered.
>>
>> There are also sections of the Deleted items folder (from June 5-25
>> approximately) where the subject name is shown for messages but
>> selecting the message results in a "message unavailable while offline"
>> message (POP3 protocol is used).  Recovery programs simply skip those
>> messages.
>>
>> The Sent folder contains 7736 messages and the Deleted Items folder has
>> about 5800 messages.  All other folders, including the apparently wiped
>> ones, are much smaller.
>>
>> Client unfortunately was not maintaining rolling backups so has only a
>> current backup, and data on that backup is also damaged.
>>
>> Hard drive diagnostics, scandisk, and anti-virus showed no problems
>> (though they hadn't run a full scan since 4/10).
>>
>> Can anyone suggest what happened?  Any magic cures are also welcome!
>> :-)
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Guy