Outlook Express Trouble.

I just did a complete Restore of the Windows ME hard drive. Three days later there's a problem in Outlook Express. It was working, then I started getting a message box saying "Msimn has caused an error in DIRECTDB.DLL. Msimn will now close." Closing the box closes OE. Mail is coming in but this situation won't let me get at it. Do I have to do another full Restore, or is there a way to restore OE only? Three-fingered restarts don't help. Neither does power off.

 

Kingman--I have no personal experience with this problem. And you have not told us what version of OE or IE you are using.
However, I did run a search on Google and came up with a long list of possible fixes. The simplest is based on the idea that your Folder.dbx has become corrupt.
http://www.fjsmjs.com/OE/directdb.htm
If that does not help, here are the lists which have other suggestions
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=+DIRECTDB.DLL
http://www.google.com/search?source...q="Msimn+has+caused+an+error+in+DIRECTDB.DLL"
These vary by version of OE.

 

Okay, I didn't say enough. It's Windows ME 4.90.3000, MS Internet Explorer 5.5, Outlook Express 5. I can send and receive. The only trouble (so far) is that I can't delete anything without getting that message about DIRECTDB.DLL. Then OE closes. You can guess that the inbox is filling up. And I'll look into those Google sites.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=225867
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=312333
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;233264

 

Several of those links you folks provided told me to rename Deleted Items.dbx to anything else. I did, went to OE and deleted everything. Thanks for the help, everyone. It's now ten minutes after midnight and I'm going to bed with a clear mind.