A real doozy @ Express pace

If anyone can explain to me what happened, and how to fix it w/out a reformat, I will be grateful, and impressed

I have a Win98 PC running on a UPS (power very unreliable here) at home. I was downloading my e-mail in Outlook Express, when we were hit by a power surge that tripped the mains, and my UPS decided that enough was enough, and quit on me as well.

Now when I try to send a message, it goes to the outbox, but as a draft message. I can download and read messages no problem, but I simply cannot send messages. I have tried adding a new account, a new profile, a new dial-up connection, and even removing Outlook express, restarting the PC, and reinstalling Express, without success. I even changed the folder where messages are stored, with no luck. I am going to try re-installing Windows itself later today, but if that doesn't work, I am fresh out of ideas.

Y'know, when I came to Africa, I thought IT problems would be less esoteric, not more

 

First, Restart in Dos Mode and type in this command.
scanreg /fix <enter>
Reboot when you get the message 'windows has repaired the registry'.
Then do the IE Repair Tool, OE will be repaired also. Control Panel\Add Remove Programs, double click IE entry, a window will pop up, select the option to repair, reboot when prompted. You won't be uninstalling.

 

If you're getting an 550 error (Relaying Prohibited) message, go into Tools>Accounts, the Properties for the account you're using, Server tab and check the "My server requires authentication" box, then click on the Advanced button and check "Use same settings as income mail server," click OK and OK.

 

Before having returned to read responses, I re-loaded windows, afetr uninstalling Express. Strangely enough, Express was there again after reloading, but with the same problem ( "unknown error ", messages in outbox = drafts). One imrovement, however, is that I am now able to actually send messages, if I don't try and save them in the "Sent Items" folder, which apparently has 40-some-odd messages in it (according to "Properties "), but none of them are visible, even if you show all the colums, or just typical ones, or anything else for that matter. I can't even drag items inot it, but then that might be normal, as how often are you going to want to drag a message INTO the sent items folder. (only not due to the furstration of this problem)

markp62, I will try your solution and advise if it offers any improvement.

Miz - thanx for the idea, but not applicable in this case.

 

A thing to try would be to go into C:\Windows\Application Data\Identities\Microsoft\{bunchoflettersandnumbers}\Outlook Express and delete the problem DBX files so that they go into the Recycle Bin. They are plainly named so you can know which ones.
These are your email folders and are probably corrupt. They should be recreated on starting OE again.

 

The probelm is now resolved. I ran scanreg, but when I tried to fix IE after, it said it couldn't do it (I think it was scrrun.dll it said was missing). I deleted the sent items dbx file, then restarted Express, and it worked fine. Thnax for the help!

(It's a now, not a as the problem is fixed, without reformatting the entire PC!)