Outlook behaved odd....

[dZeus]

I just lost _all_ my inbox emails (qutie a lot), and had only a single one in it (Welcome to MSOE)!

I was horrified, since I had quite a lot of emails in my inbox with important information. I checked all my settings, but I didn't have anything anabled that was relevant to this problem (no compact messages, etc)

I checked the place on the disc where everything is stored, and found that it created a new file, called 'inbox (1).dbx'. Inbox.dbx was still there luckily, so I just deleted the 'inbox (1).dbx' file, and renamed the old inbox.dbx to 'inbox (1).dbx'. It worked and got all my inbox mail back (VERY fortunately)! Of course I have immediately backed up all my mails to CDR now, so that I won't suffer if something else more permanently happens.

Does anyone has a clue how this can happen? could it be done through a sort of hoax mail? I didn't open any attachments that could be vulnerable, so that can't be it.

[SteveC]

Mebbe it just doesn't like you?

More likely, the inbox just reached some sort of limit as you say there were 'a lot' of emails...

Maggi has had this happen to him in the past.

I recommend use the proper 'full' outlook and then store everything in your Personal Folders (Mine in excess of 340Mb)

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[SteveC]

(I assume you're using Outlook Express)

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[FaRaN]

I HAD THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM!!!
But you were smart enough to solve it. I cursed and shouted and went out to kill some people.

Now, I'm using Eudora (in jail ), just because I don't want it to happen again.

Only if I knew that handy little trick you pulled back then...

I liked Outlook Express... but after that incident, never again.

[This message has been edited by FaRaN (edited 21 July 2000).]

[dZeus]

a limit seems very unlikely, since I have had MUCH more inbox emails some time ago (I reinstalled win2k several times since last december)

So this is a common problem with MS OE?

I already switched to another program anyway ;-)

BTW. The odd thing is that I just had some important emails with info in my inbox, and maybe there are persons that don't want the contents to be leaked to the outside world, if you know what I mean.... but probably I am just being paranoia, and have much too negative thoughts about people that they should not deserve (these thoughts)... just to be sure: were the other people suffering from this also in a situation like mine?

[This message has been edited by dZeus (edited 21 July 2000).]

[dZeus]

on second thought, I concluded that I was way too paranoid on that.

Must be a stupid bug in OE (like give me the name of a MS product wich does not have many bugs).

BTW. can someone name me a good email program which I can also use to read newsgroups with? I tried pegasus, but I don't like it...

I only need to send plain-text emails, but being able to read 'html' emails and other types with some kind of formatting would be nice.

So the new topic of this thread is:
Name your favourite email program (NOT MS OE)!

[This message has been edited by dZeus (edited 22 July 2000).]

[CHHAS]

Netscape Mail

I use IE5.0 for browsing and Njetscape 4.72 for mail.

[Werdna]

It's not Paranoia if they're really after you.

[dZeus]

but it was, since I got other mail afterwards that was contradictionary of the previous thought I had about possible people who were trying to kill emails....

and it doesn't seem very logical to do this kind of thing when people try to cover up for email contents... all my mail is also stored on my university mailserver for another year or so I think? (or whatever is standard for mailservers).

Being paranoid is a bit too easy I think... there almost always are more plausible explanations for events.

but maybe someone just send me a 'nuke' email, not connected to my mail at all...

[fds]

I had this happen to my OE once, and I believe it is caused by your system crashing while OE was running and the mail database became somewhat corrupted.
Well your mail files could possibly get corrupted on FAT even if you didn't have OE running at the time you crashed.
By doing the renaming stuff you should get your mail back seemingly correct but some messages are probably gone for good. When this happened I lost about 300 messages. None of them important thankfully.

All in all this is no good reason to stop using OE. Add your mail folder to your regular backups if what you get is important. No matter which email client you are using.

By the way, unless you selected the option for leaving the messages on the server after the download, it works as expected.
The message is gone from your server. So no, unless your university account enforces to have a copy of your mail kept for whatever ugly reason, they aren't stored on the server any more.

[fds]

Darn. I keep forgetting the most important things. So here we go another time.

If you do decide to continue using OE, there is now a REALLY serious buffer overrun bug in every version before OE 5.01 SP1 (that is, only 5.01SP1 or 5.5 is free of the bug -- and NOTE that under W2k the IE5.5 update leaves OE intact, so you either choose to install the 5.01SP1 update instead, or wait till W2k SP1 which will have the fix).

Buffer overrun errors are dead serious because the least you will get with a malicious message is a crash, in the worst case it was tricky enough to execute ANY code he wrote on your system.

And because where it is in OE, all this could occur WITHOUT opening attachements.. Not even opening the message to read the text is necessary.

It will occur immediately when OE is downloading the message from the server...

[Pertti]

Funny enough, the best Email program that I have seen so far, is the MS InternetMail that came with MSIE3.02.

It handles the thousands of emails I have in different folders without any problems (doesn't slow down like some do already with couple of hundred), and it couldn't care less about the script viruses spread in signatures or within the code (Outlook users have only BG to thank about those )

Pertti