Is too many emails causing my problem? [with Windows Mail]

Hi everyone maybe you can help me. I've got a nice newish laptop running on Vista and I use Windows Mail. Its stopped working today - when I power up and click on email, Windows Mail tries to open but just gives me the timer forever and never ends up opening.

I do have a LOT of emails in there, and have been meaning to have a clear out. Wish I'd got round to it now. I've even tried uninstalling Windows Mail so that I can just start again but it wont even let me do that, it just says "preparing to uninstall" for ages then times out. It wont let me do anything but I'm pretty sure the problem is Windows Mail. I can get on the internet but can't seem to use Internet Explorer either (I know internet is working because Live Messenger etc powers up and shows me as online).

I guess my question is, do you think it is the fact that I have too many emails, and if I can't get into Windows Mail, how the hell do I fix it or erase them all? Any other suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks for your help I'm sure one of your magnificent brains will come up with a solution for me?!

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1. You could try rebuilding the message store:

Close Windows Mail and copy the mail folders somewhere else, e.g. to another partition. If you haven't moved it, the normal location is the hidden folder C:\Users\{user name}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail.
It is safer to copy the entire \Windows Mail folder rather than just the Inbox, Sent Items, etc. and it also gives you a backup in case something goes wrong. To navigate to these folders you must have "˜Hidden files’ unticked in Folder Options.

Next, delete WindowsMail.MSMessageStore in the \Windows Mail folder. There may be another occurrence of it in \Backup\new, if so delete it.

Start Windows Mail and a new message store will be created. A set of recovered mail boxes is created and messages in these can be dragged to the proper mail boxes, e.g. Inbox. If not all the messages appear, using Explorer, open your backup folder (created above) and move this window so it's visible alongside Windows Mail. Now drag and drop messages to their respective mail boxes. You can highlight and drag an entire group if you like, don't copy anything but .eml files. However, you may have to copy the Winmail.fol file at the end of each folder if copying produces an error. Test that everything is back to normal by sending yourself an email.

2. If you don’t want to try the above, you could go to the message store and just rename the Inbox or move it to a different location. Alternatively, move some of the individual email messages elsewhere. They have an extension of .eml.