outlook express - accidental deletion of messages

[lakshminarayanan]

dear members
i use outlook express 6 in a P-4 system with win xp pro with SP2.

i have seen twice in the past that the mails stored have been deleted accidentally. there is no virus or other attack as the system is otherwise working fine. and my anti virus and anti spyware softwares are ok and are fully updated.

last night, a message popped up offering to compact the inbox folder. i allowed it but today morning i find that the mails in the last one month have been deleted. the earlier mails remain intact. i have done similar compacting and no such problem occured earlier.

i keep the mails in my documents folder and i see no trace of the deleted mails. the e mail recovery and general data recovery softwares are not able to detect the missing mails.

though they are not important mails, i would like to know how they can get deleted just by chance. i have admin. privileges and only one person (my brother) besides me has access to the system. and i lock the system totally in the night and it was in the same state when i powered it on today
morning.

i would like to get the advice as how to recover the mails, if possible and how to avoid such problems. i will back up the mails once in a while from now on.
thanks in advance.

[anandk]

open outlookexpress > tools > options > maintenance
just check up which boxes u have checked...

[vignesh]

There are email recovery tools..Can`t remember their name google ! But I can give you a tip for avoiding this In the options in Outlook Express check the box that says Leave the messages on the server so even if you delete the message in the Outlook Express the copy of the message is still on the mail server that you go the website and see it..Or markit unread and download it again to your Inbox.