Resolved original OE replaced by an empty one

Windows XP OE 6.
I use Mailwasher to check my mail, delete what I don't want, then tell it to "process mail ". Have done so for years with never a hitch. Till today: I am now faced with a beautifully clean inbox with today's emails but nothing else, default local folders, all empty. Is there any way of recovering my lost mails? The old OE has obviously been overwritten/replaced by this fresh one, so I'm not very hopeful. But one never knows!
P.S. The address book is intact, only the mails have gone

 

The Recycle Bin is empty. And the only Outlook Express folder I find in Documents and Settings is dated 06/01/2010, very meagre, no folders except for the default one. I had replaced the OE folder that came with a re-install of windows XP, with the one I was using before, on a different partition. It's still there, but cleaned up totally. I'm afraid XP decided this morning that I wanted a clean slate. And did it for me. Bore is I wrote some emails last night, saved them into Drafts, and have now lost them. I'm afraid there is no cure, just on the off-chance ....
Thanks for taking the trouble to try and help.

 

Yes, everything is exactly the same as always. Nothing else is changed, same folders open as last night, same tabs open in Firefox, same clipcache, same everything, only the OE email Local Folders have disappeared, been replaced by new Inbox (12 new items), and empty Outbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items and Drafts. Very neat and clean looking.
Thanks anyway.

 

What's listed as your store folder?

Tools>Options>Advanced>Maintenance>Store Folder

 

Thanks for your help. I have my store folder on a different partition and it is still the same one as before, in the same place, called the same, but its contents have been replaced by fresh, empty folders. Except for the inbox with today's emails of course.

I have recovered erased partitions before, what I have not done is managed to recover part of a partition that has been overwritten by something new. None of the programmes I have do that, and I hoped someone here might know of a solution. It's not a matter of life or death, if it can't be done, then too bad. I still have an old backup copy on my laptop, so all is not lost anyway.

 

Did you try a system wide search for inbox.dbx to see if its been inadvertently moved somewhere? You could also do it from a linux live boot if windows doesn't allow you to search certain directories.

 

I had already searched for inbox.dbx but nothing doing. As I've said, the whole folder has been overwritten, replaced by a fresh one. Don't ask me why, the ways of computers are unfathomable at times.
I must have done something stupid, though I haven't the faintest idea what. I am a little hasty flicking annoying messages away, but always denying permission, never allowing without checking. That's what I find so odd, how could I possibly have given permission to replace my current folder by an empty fresh one. And no, I don't have nasties, no virus, trojan, keylogger ....
Thanks for trying anyway.

 

Looks like you're out of luck then.... Unless someone else can come up with anything...

 

I can't mark the thread as "solved" as it isn't. Just leave it open in case someone at some time comes up with a possible cure for when such silly things happen. Have a nice Sunday.
Thanks.

 

I had the same problem a week ago. I ended up re-setting my password with my ISP and low and behold I had all my folders back with all the e-mails. Don't know why but it worked for me.

 

Now, there's something....

@Roncesvalles: This would be the case if your email client was set to IMAP rather than POP3. Since noisemkr had his password corrupted in some way (and IF he was using IMAP as opposed to POP3) this would result in the same symptoms.

Roncesvalles: Can you check if you are using IMAP or POP3 email...

 

I actually had change to pop3 but I was using GMail to check my pop3 account. GMail did check my pop3 account for a couple of days and then nothing. My password was corrupted at this time so I stopped GMail from checking my pop3 account.

 

Yes, I understand that - but what I've outlined could create the same symptoms that Roncesvalles is getting - going from IMAP to POP3 would mean losing all the folders on the local machine.

 

Sorry, only found these last posts just now.
My email account has always been POP3, my password was never corrupted, it's just a question of something having happened locally on my computer. We'd had 3 times people steal the telephone cables in our area and were left without telephone/internet connections for days. I suppose my OE got confused and maybe asked me if I wanted my old folder or a fresh start and I clicked the wrong button without realizing what I was doing. The old contents have gone, too bad, I can live with that. I mark this as solved, as this is obviously down to human error on my part. And therefore can't be fixed, retrospectively.