How can I recover stored OE files?

Anc96

One minute my email folders were there, then I closed my email, reopened it, and they were gone.
Found them in my recycling bin, looking odd (not a OE icon) and not able to restore them.
After running all the required scans for the virus removal (, they now have an OE icon (.bak) , but I still can't restore them. Some info in them is pretty important. I'd love to get them back.

I didn't know what had happed, so I posted on the "Virus Removal" forum. I was told that I am not infected, and it may be "archive action gone astray"

Since, I have moved a couple of unimportant ones to my desktop and changed the file extention to .eml, which will allow me to see the email (with the source code and such, very hard to read the actual email), but I have lost whole folders, and it looks like doing this will only allow me to read one email in the folder. I am afraid to move anything important.

Any help will be so appreciated. Do you need any reports?

TIA
Anc96

mas0n

I would start by navigating to your Store Folder to see if the .dbx files are still there. It's possible that your old store folder or profile was corrupted and OE has created a new one.

You may find this article to be of some help.

What exactly did you find in the Recycle Bin? Have you experienced anything else unusual on the machine, perhaps losing user settings or documents? When you say "then I closed my email, reopened it, and they were gone." did ANYTHING happen in between? Installed applications, updates, BSOD, manual reboot?

Anc96

I found both the .bak and .dbx files in the store folder.

What exactly did you find in the Recycle Bin?

I found the names of my email folders, but the icon wasn't an email or OE icon. I can't remember what it was though.
After I had run activescan, kaspersky, and the other requirements for the SVR, the icons were now OE icons with a .bak file extention. I tried restoring them, but nothing happened that I noticed. I put a couple of unimportant ones on my desktop and clicked, and of course OE opened up, but nothing else. Then I changed the extention from .bak to .eml and clicked. Now the email opened. I could read text, and source code, but it now opened as a single email, and they had been folders with multiple emails.

Have you experienced anything else unusual on the machine, perhaps losing user settings or documents?

No.. I haven't noticed anything else missing, nor any settings changed. I did check my recycling bin for anything else I might recognize that wasn't supposed to be there, but didn't notice anything.

When you say "then I closed my email, reopened it, and they were gone." did ANYTHING happen in between? Installed applications, updates, BSOD, manual reboot?

Yes.. I lost cable service. It's not unusual in my area, and I didn't think anything of it. My email got an error, I wasn't online anymore, so I closed the email and opened it again. My folders were gone and I was still off line. I restarted the pc and it was still the same. I tried resetting the modem, but it didn't do anything so I figured it was just the cable service. I started looking for my folders but didn't think of looking in the recycling bin for quite a while. I didn't know then how to find the store folder. Cable service came back about half an hour later.

Nothing new had been downloaded or installed.
Later that night after this happened I did a system restore.. but nothing changed...

So I came to the all-knowing Icrontic community hoping for help

I read the article, I'm afraid I find it confusing.
If Folders.dbx becomes corrupt, OE often stops displaying folders for existing *.dbx files, and sometimes will simply refuse to start. Also a bloated Folders.dbx can make OE run very slowly. Both problems can be repaired by closing OE and deleting Folders.dbx. Understand though that you will lose the mail tree structure, all lists of newsgroups, and all synchronization options, and that message rules will likely need to be edited.

This sounds like it could have happened.. but if by deleting Folders.dbx file I loose the "mail structure tree", is that referring to all of my folders?

I would appreciate any suggestions, especially ones that don't include losing my email folders.

Thank you for your help.. and tolerance. I'm not very pc litterate.
Anc96