Netscape 7.1 Inbox disappeared

Dear Ramona and Westside:
It has been about three weeks since I've posted. In the interim I have been dealing with a couple of IT wizards from a major corporation I am affiliated with. These guys have been examining my computer via screen share. One of the things they did was to run a consumer scanning tool, which uncovered some as yet unexplainable things (like: a years-long gap in deleted files; like: no files at all of the size my inbox must have been). The next step (next week) will be to do a far more detailed scan with a commercial scanning tool. They still think there's chance that my lost emails are on my hard drive. We'll see....

 

If the Inbox is larger than the mail which you have now, it is due to the fact that deleted mail remains associated with the Inbox, or any other folder, until the folder is compacted. This is the most common source of folder bloat. If you have not compacted the folders for years, it may take forever to do the job. If you have not File|compact folders, do this first.
I went into great details to the compacting issue, which you have not replied to. You don't need a commercial scanning tool to do this.

 

Everything was compacted and continues to be automatically compacted when it reaches a specified size.

 

Good, that files are compacted, but, what does the above statement mean?
Also, you say that the Inbox keeps growing. It should, if you receive new mail. But, how much? You can have windows explorer open (minimized), and see what happens, before compacting, and, after compacting (do it manually with File|Compact folders, or just, right click on the Inbox|select Compact, and click on it). If there is no change, you are, probably, looking at the incorrect folder.