Importance of Outlook Express and comparison between Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express

Outlook Express is the e-mail client that is included with Microsoft Internet Explorer. It is designed to gain access to their e-mail messages by dialing in to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to POP (Post office protocol) email messages from the remote server. This email client uses POP protocol to receive emails and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) to send email messages.

The importance of Outlook Express is:

• It ensures you to take advantage of new technologies seamlessly send and receive E-mail, where it has the ability to receive mail from multiple e-mail accounts.
• You can create Inbox rules to filter and organize e-mail messages, which helps you to manage and organize your e-mail to communicate and share information more effectively.

Outlook Express is a different application from Microsoft Office Outlook e-mail client, which ships with Microsoft Office for Windows. The two programs do not share a common code base, but do share a common architectural philosophy. The similar names may lead to incorrectly conclude that Outlook Express is a stripped-down version of Microsoft Office Outlook.

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Symptoms of DBX Corruption

The initial symptoms of DBX corruption usually begins unknowingly. You might notice that Outlook Express opens slowly when starting, or when switching folders. Simple tasks like marking a message as read might take several seconds. Such performance issues usually mean that some minor corruption has occurred but has not yet reached a serious level.

If the corruption is wider but engrosses a single e-mail or news folder, Outlook Express might crash with this error when you try to open the damaged folder:

Msimn caused an exception C0000006h in module Directdb.dll. The message could not be sent. There is not enough Disk space.

In such cases, the corruption can usually be repaired by compacting all your Outlook Express folders. If compacting does not rectify the corruption, you will need to move all messages out of the damaged folder (if possible), close Outlook Express, and then delete the linked DBX file for that folder. If you cannot open the folder, move the damaged DBX file out of the Store Folder into a new folder you create.
 
In cases of severe corruption, Outlook Express will no longer recognize that the DBX file exits, and so the corresponding folder will disappear from the Folder list. If however the corrupt file is Inbox.dbx, Outlook Express will sometimes create a new one and append a number to its name, such as Inbox(1).dbx. If this happens when you open the Inbox, you will see your Inbox messages disappear right before your very eyes!

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Understanding DBX Files

Let us try and get an overview of Outlook Express user files i.e. dbx files. Each folder that you see in the Outlook Express Folder list is stored on your hard disk as a single file with the same name as the folder but with the extension DBX added at the end, such as “Inbox.dbx” and “Sent Items.dbx”.

All these DBX email archive files are stored in a single Windows folder called Store Folder. The Store Folder is usually located deep inside Documents and Settings folder in Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and is by default marked as a hidden folder. This makes it tricky to find your Store Folder in Windows Explorer, but there is a very good reason for this. One source of DBX corruption is trying to open and edit a DBX file yourself.

It is sufficient to know that a message inside a DBX is not simply a string of text that you can read, but rather is broken up into parts, which are not assembled into a readable message until you access the related folder in Outlook Express. Also, please be aware that changing even a single byte in a DBX file might cause the file completely unusable by Outlook Express.

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Prevent your dbx file from corruption

If you follow these below mentioned steps outlined here, you will greatly reduce the chances that your DBX files will become corrupt.

1. You should disable the default e-mail scan in your anti-virus program.
2. If you have not installed Windows XP SP2, disable automatic background compaction.
3. Keep minimum number of emails in your Inbox, you should move messages to other folders you create.
4. Make sure that the Sent Items folder does not grow to an unmanageable size, it should be having less then 2000 emails.
5. Compact all folders on a regular basis, such as bi-weekly, or more often if you make extensive use of e-mail or newsgroups.
6. When compacting, do not use your computer until the process is finished. In addition, your Outlook Express should be in offline mode.
7. Purchase a copy of DD DBX Repair for emergency use.
8. Keep your computer and anti-virus products up to date with the latest patches.
9. Backup your entire Store Folder on a regular basis.

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Change or Locate Outlook Express DBX store path

It is useful to know that Outlook Express stores its email files in a location such as the following:

Windows 95 or Windows 98

%drive%WindowsApplication DataMicrosoftOutlook Express

Where Windows is the folder in which Windows 95 or Windows 98 is installed. 

Windows NT, and Windows 95 or Windows 98 with user profiles enabled

%drive%WindowsProfilesUsernameApplication DataMicrosoftOutlook Express

Where Windows is the folder in which Windows is installed, and Username is the name you use to log on to Windows. 

Windows 2000, XP and 2003

%drive%Documents & Settings<User Name>Local SettingsApplication DataIdentities {UID}

Even if you are not able to locate the default path or would like to change the store path for your DBX files, follow this procedure

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. Click the Maintenance tab, and then click Store Folder (Here you can locate the default store path of your DBX files in Outlook Express). 
3. Click Change, specify the folder that you want to use to store your messages, and then click OK.

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Emails lost from outlook express inbox.dbx

This is the most common situation we face with Outlook Express as we loose lot of our important emails and moreover we do not know the exact reason.Outlook Express is a free component which gets installed with Internet Explorer which has been replaced by Windows Mail in Vista with Internet Explorer 7.0.

But still today it is competing with email clients such Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird and Lotus Notes and has quite good number of users.Suddenly emails getting disappeared from our dbx folders could be a result of:

1. Oversized DBX file
2. Corruption caused after using Compact option
3. Any other file corruption caused due to improper shut down or malfunction of any third party applications.

The good news is that those lost emails can be recovered. First locate all your dbx files, the ost common path for DBX store folder is %drive%Documents & Settings<User Name>Local SettingsApplication DataIdentities {UID} and backup all of them.

Take a copy of all the DBX files which needs to be repaired, from where you are looking to recover lost emails. Download the demo copy of DD DBX Repair demo version from the below mentioned link:

Download Free dbx Repair Trial

Run the software and follow on screen procedure, you may select the default identity displayed by the software or you can pick files separately by browsing for them. Select the destination path for the recovered DBX file and let the software scan the file.Demo version would scan files for the lost emails and being a demo version could save only 3 emails in .eml format to the destination path. But would tell you total numbers emails it has found.

You now just need to buy the software to download the full version of the software and unlock the same to re-recover the same dbx file and this time you should get all the emails. The output would in .eml format inside a folder, you just need to create a folder in Outlook Express and drag and drop these “eml” files inside a DBX folder to restore all your lost emails.

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