User Guide

• Repair damaged Outlook Express folder
• Recover permanently deleted messages

How to repair corrupted Outlook Express folder

Symptoms of DBX file corruption

When you start Outlook Express or try to send an e-mail message or try to open the damaged folder, you may get one of the following error messages:

• MSIMN caused an invalid page fault in module Directdb.dll
• Msimn caused an exception C0000006h in module Directdb.dll
• Outlook Express: The message could not be sent. There is not enough Disk space
• Unknown error has occurred. Protocol: SMTP Port: 0 Secure: No [SSL] Error: 0x800c0131

How it works

The program scans DBX files and finds e-mail messages stored in them. Each message it finds is saved to a separate file with the EML extension in the Windows folder you specify. These saved EML files are of an universal format and can be easily imported into Outlook Express.

Corrupted DBX files are recovered in two steps:

1. Extracting messages from a DBX file into a separate folder on the disk and saving each e-mail message into a separate file with the EML extension

   To extract messages from a DBX file, do the following:

   • Click the "Regular messages" tab (if it's not active yet) to switch to the mode of recovering lost messages
   • Select the necessary DBX file or Outlook Express folder in the left part of the window. The program will start to search for lost messages
   • After the search is over, the program will display the list of the found messages. Right-click the message list and select the messages you would like to recover. Click the "Save recovered messages" button in the toolbar. Each message will be saved as a file with the EML extension. To open such a file, double-click it.

2. Importing recovered messages into Outlook Express

   To import recovered messages into Outlook Express:

   • Open the folder with the saved EML files in Windows Explorer
   • Start Outlook Express and just use drag&drop to move these EML files to the necessary Outlook Express folder. (Hint: Press Ctrl+A to select all the files in the Windows Explorer window.)

How to recover permanently deleted messages

How it works

When you delete a message from an Outlook Express folder, it is not actually deleted, but only marked as deleted. Such a message, marked as deleted, stays in the Outlook Express folder until a new message is written to the location it occupies or until the user compacts the folder. Nevertheless, part of information is lost permanently when you delete an Outlook Express message. That is why it is often impossible to recover files attached to e-mail message since they have a complicated format.

To recover recently deleted messages, do the following:

1. Click the "Recently deleted" tab (if it's not active yet) to switch to the mode of recovering recently or accidentally deleted messages.
2. Select the necessary Outlook Express folder in the left part of the window. The program will start to search for deleted messages. After the search is over, the program will display the list of the found messages. Right-click the message list and select the messages you would like to recover. Click the "Save recovered messages" button in the toolbar. Each message will be saved as a file with the EML extension. To open such a file, double-click it. You may fail to open some files with a double click. You can try to open them with the help of a text editor to extract at least some useful information (e.g. the sender's address).
3. The last step is importing EML files into an Outlook Express folder. It is even simpler. Just drag and drop files from Windows Explorer folder into an Outlook Express folder.