Outlook Express 6 problem

JWM

Could someone help me please?

Have Virgin (formerly Telewest) broadband with OE6.

All fine then yesterday pm couldn't receive/send emails - kept getting the Logon box with the username/password prompt.

Still happening this morning so I called Virgin - the helpdesk checked my password and settings and then said it was a problem with outlook and not Virgin - which does make sense cos I can go into the 'selfcare' area without any problems.

So the lady said to contact my PC Provider....but that was PC World 3 years ago and I didn't find them very helpful.

If Outlook is corrupt do I have to delete and reinstall it? If so, will I lose all the emails, addresses etc?

Could someone advise the best way of doping this please....as I'm not very technical!

Thanks

cledor

OE does that sometimes, but don't uninstall it, try restarting the PC and see if this helps. It could be your antivirus locking up.

JWM

Nope, restarted numerous times!

The problem started yesterday after the PC suddenly shut down, when I switched it back on it all looked OK but no send/receive email. As you say, it does occassionaly do that but its been nearly 24 hours with at least 7 restarts.

Thanks anyway.

cledor

Have you checked for viruses, malware etc? See the sticky at the top of this forum. There could be a rogue email in your OE messages causing all this.

f1charlie

I have had email problems with my ISP where it asks for the login details, but I could still access the web, because the web server and email server are separate.
If you are absolutely sure that the problem is not at Virgin's end then there is a guide to repairing Outlook Express here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/community/columns/oerepair.mspx

But I would make sure you have a backup of important emails, address book, etc, before trying anything.

Even before trying that, have you tried going back to a restore point before the problems started?

JWM

Thanks, yes I tried restoring to Monday, but still the same problem.

cledor

Do you have another email account you can test OE with, such as Hotmail, GMail or another ISP.

Could Virgin have changed the settings, such as request for authentication.

JWM

Have just called the PC World helpline and apparently OE is corrupt on this machine and my only option is reinstalling, which is a total nightmare as far as I'm concerned.

Cledor - the Virgin Helpdesk is an Indian call centre and the lady I spoke to (whilst helpful) was reading from a script and didn't really know very much.

albertross_2

Have you checked your mail account settings in OE?

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mailpv.html

If yes, then try thunderbird

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable

This should prove whether it is an OE issue

JWM

Sorry - what should I be doing with those 2 links albertross? I'm a bit of a techno thickie!!

Thanks

peterbaker

Hi there - can be very annoying - but don't worry unduly just yet.

In OE6 your email folders are stored as .dbx files. A separate file for each folder i.e. Inbox.dbx, Drafts.dbx, Sent.dbx, even MyOwnSpecialFolder1.dbx and MyOtherSpecialFolder2.dbx if you have created any of your own.

If you do a Start/Search and then 'search for files and folder named' *.dbx where * is a wildcard character.

You will find these buried several folders deep but the penultimate folder name is Identities. You might find more than one Identity which would mean that perhaps you have another user login on your pc or that you had reinstalled Windows or IE/OE previously in such a way as to start from scratch.

Anyway, if you do find more than one identity (each one has a unique very long code in curly brackets as its folder name) then you might be able to spot which one is your current one by the names of the folders in it or simply by the sizes of the *.dbx files (a little used Inbox.dbx will be much smaller than an Inbox.dbx that contains 2 years worth of emails).

So then, you can copy as many of those files as you like to anywhere you like to use as a backup later if necessary.


Now then, all that was the good news and intended to show you that all your old mails should still be there. The possible bad news is that one or more of the *.dbx files has been corrupted and there is a slim chance you might lose some mails or attachments.

The *.dbx files are simple database-type containers. Each individual email is one record in the database (a bit like one line of a spreadsheet).

Actually you may in fact realise that each individual email (including any of its attachments) can be exported as an *.eml file. So if you like, you can think of a *.dbx file as a tin of caviar i.e. just stuffed full of *.emls!

Just like the best Beluga, you can import existing *.dbx files and their contents anywhere in the world into a brand new installation of OE on to the same or another computer or even into full blown Office Outlook and a number of other email programs. So that's how you might use copies as a backup later.


So, hopefully reassured, and possibly manually having made yourself some backup copies of all the important *.dbx files, you are ready to tinker...

Before assuming that OE is well and truly corrupted, I would explore whether or not the Account login settings had simply got altered ... perhaps by installation or change to your antivirus program.

In the bad old days, installation of Norton Antivirus used to change the username to something a bit weird with your actual Virgin username tagged on the end as /yourVirginUserName.

Just recently a friend of mine had a similar problem to yours but different email provider caused by a change at the Email Provider end which I fixed by editing his OE Account settings under Tools/Accounts/Properties/Servers a combination of using the full email address as the username, and also using an alternative send server that I happened to know would likely work better than the old one pre-takeover of my friend's provider by a bigger one!



If you check your OE...Tools/.../Servers settings and all still looks OK, then from this point (and with backups safely stored somewhere) I can only recommend trying to follow the repair link that f1charlie provided.

A Google for "repair Outlook Express" might yield some further clues (indeed you might notice that f1charlie's link is the first of several on the Google hit list!).

Good luck and chin up! It's annoying but I doubt it is terminal:-)