Outlook Express Ate My Lunch!

I received an e-mail from the good folks at MS titled "Welcome to Outlook Express 6 ". Since my new machine with WIN XP Pro is over 2 weeks old already this seemed odd. What is really odd is that it seems Windows updated Outlook Express as it looks completely different and I seem to have lost the last 2+ weeks of e-mails and everything in my address book!
Wazzup with this MS nastiness and is there a way to recoup my losses? I liked the 'old' Outlook just fine.

 

PS

Outlook has also taken upon itself to not allow me access to the attachments in my e-mail! When I double click on an attachment from my brother it says "OE removed access to the following unsafe attachments in your mail: (no subject).eml ". Talk about Big Brother! Do we have any control over our lives any more?

 

Shturmovik--The problem in your second post should be easy to overcome. Click OE Tools|Options|Security tab and uncheck the box "Do not allow attachemnts... "|Apply|OK.
The other problem is truly weird. Are you sure you did not install a patch from MS, such as perhaps automatically through Windows Update? What versions of OE and IE are you now running?
You might run a spyware detector such as
AdAware
http://www.lavasoft.de/support/download/
or SpybotS&D
http://security.kolla.de/
Make sure you update the definitions before running.

 

No patches

I have not installed any patches. Sometimes my wife does things unwittingly that she later vehemently denies but I really doubt she is responsible. Doesn't XP automatically update itself? Except the version of OE that is now bedeviling me seems much cruder than what I had originally. And if it was an auto-update from Big Bill I would think it would not trash my address book and old e-mails. By the way I ran a complete virus scan and trojan scan with no results. I have SpyBot and AdAware so I will run them but what will they show? And they won't fix the prob.

 

Mystery Solved!

Sorry you have to deal with such morons as me. I didn't realize there was difference between OE and MS Office Outlook. The latter had been my default e-mail until I hooked up my old scanner which somehow tricked me into making OE the default e-mail account, duh! Oh well, live and learn, hopefully!

 

FWIW,
I have had OE, for no discernible reason, just revert to default, taking all my emails and folders and message rules with it. Once or twice I have gotten it back with SR, but usually it's just plain gone. Really important email I store to the hd, and I have learned to keep all my dbx files on my second partition. I have been able to "put them back" after OE crashes, but still have to recreate all the folders and message rules. Also, sometimes when OE comes up blank, if you immediately reboot, the dbx files restore themselves. Yes, I know there many many email clients out there, why I continue to use OE is a mystery to me.

Johanna

 

OE Default

Johanna,
You said "I have had OE, for no discernible reason, just revert to default, taking all my emails and folders and message rules with it. Once or twice I have gotten it back with SR, but usually it's just plain gone."

It reverted from Office Outlook? SR = sys restore? Surely those files must be somewhere? If the FBI can read hard drives after they have been erased then surely the data must be in some mystery file somewhere? Yes, probably not worth inviting the FBI in to find it though.

 

Have you tried opening OE, going to file/import/messages?

I recently installed OE 6 for a friend using W98 and his email was gone but was able to import in via the above