O.E. Crashing - help!

I can’t open any newsgroups in OE6 (I keep emails in webmail).
I have several pay accounts and use newsgroups daily "“ and everything was fine "“ until I tried to send a reply to a newsgroup message. It was not sent due to "too many connections" - or something. Didn’t pay much attention "“ just clicked it off.
Now a dialog box pops up - and I can't update messages or download from any newsgroups. I found my failed reply message in "sent" folder and deleted it - but something is still blocking me. The O.E. Message says: An unknown response was received in response to a request for info from the news server "free.terranews.com ".
How do I clear out that "failed task" and get back to normal?

Note that I also have a giganews account and it is also blocked "“ so it’s not just one account. What happens is that 45 seconds after I open any newsgroup in OE "“ I get the message "O.E. has encountered a problem and needs to close nowâ€. If I do try to open a message before that - it give this:
“Message could not be displayed. Outlook Express encountered an unexpected problem while displaying this message. Check your computer for low memory or low disk space and try again.â€
Clicking on details gives a message listing an error naming directdb.dll.
It also list low resourses. But I have just burned a 550MB CD of files "“ and deleted these from the HD "“ as well as deleting about another GB. So I should have at least 1.5 GB "“ or so free space "“ but it lists about 120MB. I run a disk clean-up and the free space shows less! After a few minutes of being online "“ the free space was listed as 10MB. This number varies between 10 and 120MB. I'm not downloading a thing - so it's should be much more.
I got a virus warning message earlier for" bloodhound.exploit.18â€. I immediately ran Norton AV scan (w/ an 11/23/04 update), Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware. It found no viruses. I removed all malware.
Looks like I'm at a dead-end. What to do????

Thanks,
Charlie

 

Thanks Pete,

Sorry. I'm running XP, SP1 w/ 4 additional patches (didn't D/L SP2 yet - because I've heard of problems). I've got 1.85 Mhz w/ 40GB HD.

Yes got an alert from NAV. Said they couldn't delete it - I so assumd it was quarentined. But I looked and it's not in quarentined folder. I see a back-up copy of the infected file. This virus was addressed in an upate Nov.8th - I believe. I have auto-update on. So computer should have been protected.

I am not sure what to do with your link: "How to reinstall or repair Internet Explorer and Outlook Express in Windows XP ". Note that I have the "low resourses" problem going on. Not sure if this needs to be addressed first. For example - I was looking for a good available date to "restore" windows settings to - but I can't even view these - due to not enough free disk space to run a restore. Says I need at least 200MB. Of course I stated that I should have 1.5BG minimun free space - but it's not showing. I could try to delete some more unnessary files and try this approach.

At this point - I am confused by what is going on - overall. Please walk me through the necessary steps, please.

Thanks again,
Charlie

 

Pete,
Yeah - I suspected the problem was, in fact, low resourses.
Before I came back here - and OVER 24 HRS after I deleted 1.5 GB of files - it finally showed up on "my computer ", 2.06GB free space. And as I suspected - everything is now running OK - that is except the files taking over 24 hours to show as deleted.

I was running a clean-up every 5 minutes - or so. The listed free space was wrong (or the files hadn't really been deleted yet?) at 120MB -and even more wrong at 10MB. Maybe I'll wait till you're back to run "sfc" - in case of troubles.

Thanks,
Charlie

btw - 104 files and 36MB in %temp% - but can't delete. Says all in use or write protected?

 

I should have gotten back sooner. See last reply about the Temp Files.
I did run the sfc/ scannow "“ and things were going much better. But the problem of low resources has popped up again. For example: I burned a 700MB CD and deleted those files from the HD. Also deleted another 1-2 GB of non-essential files. But on "My Computer" it showed only 26MB of free space. This free space didn’t show up for about 2 days. Then it only listed 700MB. After a few minutes of surfing this number had dropped to less than 100MB. I downloaded no files and ran the disk clean-up repeatedly.

Today I am getting "Outlook Express has encountered a problem and need to close nowâ€.
Recourses are listed as 0. I do a clean-up and it lists 120MB of free space. I free up about 30MB more free space and it now shows 10MB of free space "“ and then I get the error message again. If I reboot "“ I get a little more free space listed "“ but not what it should be. If I open the Temporary Internet folder there appears to be about one folder and 500kb of files listed. However a properties check of the folder it lists 39 folders with over 10GB of files. How do I get these to show "“ or how to I get these to be cleaned on a disk clean-up?

Help please.

 

If have loaded patches, hot fixes, service packs, etc. and are comfortable with them (at least two weeks since their install and nothing has blown up) you can remove their uninstall files without causing problems. Look in c:\windows for files with names like the ones in the first picture. Note that you should set windows explorer => tools => folder options => view to show hidden and system files first.

If you have hibernation turned on and don't use it regularly, turn it off and you'll gain another chunk of free space. 2nd picture.

In internet explorer, reduce the amount of space you allow for Temporary Internet files to around 10Mb and your history to a length of time when you might reasonably want to use the history listings to find a site. I set mine at zero days so I retain history only until I close the browser but some folks do use those files.

In OE, make sure your deleted and sent folders are cleared. Then do whatever it is in OE to clean things up and reclaim space. Sorry but haven't run OE for yonks and don't remember more than that there is such a feature.

 

I do have hidden folders set to show.

Hibernate should be off - but I'll check later.

In temp. internet files "settings" I have it set save a max. of 600MB.

I'm not sure why - when I go to the Temp. Internet Files folder - a "properties" check gives 39 files and 10.5GB. When I open it - I see only the one folder and a few MB of files - at most. If I can get these to show - I can delete them manually.
If this number is correct - should resetting max. temp files to 10MB delete the excess amount - or does this have to be done before resetting. I thought I maybe could just delete temp internet files at the same place: in IE - tools/internet options/general tab - but after clicking on "delete files" the size was not reduced. These 10GB of files can't seem to be purged with disk clean-up or here either.

 

In OE click file>folder>compact all folders. If it's never been done before you might be surprised at how much space you recover. Especially if you do a lot of downloading in any of the binaries groups.

 

I read that other thread. Interesting to know that it is not just me. I don't have SP2 - still Win XP/ SP1.

D/L'd and ran EasyCleaner. Did a one click delete for all T.I.F.s. Surprise! My suspicions were correct. Free space on C Drive went from about 100MB to 10.6GB. (Remember I said properties indicated 10.5GB hiding somewhere?)

I may run some of the other options later - but this is what I wanted for now.
Thank you very much for your helpful tips. I just wish I knew how to get the stupid thing to work right in the 1st place.
Thanks Pete (and Newt)

 

I may have too many downloaded headers - it's taking forever. I may go into the OE folder and delete some of these excessive large files - and try to compress what's left.
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BTW - Everyone involved on this thread. I rebooted after all these clean-ups and was totally freaked to find this message:
"Invalid System Disk. Replace the Disk and then Press any Key ".
Took 3 restarts to boot properly. Any clue whats up? Warning of a problem - like bad HD?

Charlie

 

If you want to delete all of the headers from just the newsgroups at once you can click tools>options>maintenance and click on the button that says cleanup now. You'll be given several different choices of things to do. If you want to just delete the messages or headers and messages in certain groups you can right click on the particular group, choose properties>local file. You can also compact individual groups in this manner. If these files are quite large, there's a pretty good chance you'll see a performance boost in OE after you clean them up a bit. Does OE take a while to load when you first start it? If so, this could be the cause.

 

I keep downloaded headers in several newsgroups to allow me to see what I have seen or downloaded. It adds up - and after a while I manually go to the dbx files in the OE folder and delete from there. Sometimes it totals several GB. The compression should help - as some have 126MB of waisted space. Thanks for that tip.

Charlie