I went to IE5 in late February. Last week my motherboard (Pentium 100) went West (CMOS battery failure with a non-replaceable battery)and I replaced it with a new motherboard with an AMD K6 300 processor. The shop told me that W98 might have to be reinstalled due to the change. So before I took it in I backed up my complete C hard drive to my second hard drive using W98's backup program. It said that all went well. Merely reinstalling the W98 upgrade didn't do the trick. I had to format the C disk, install W95, install the W98 upgrade, and then restore the backed-up C disk file from my D disk - without the system registry. All my data was restored except for the Outlook Express mail files that I had generated or received since I went to IE5! I double checked and those mails had never been backed up at all - or if they had, there was no trace of them in my mail folder. Anyone got an answer for this one?

a bit late now I know but the upgrade is no different to the full package except that it needs to see the old version. you can point to your old win95 cd or even an old windows 3.1 floppy to do your install. are you familiar with what your mail looks like? it might still be there. try doing a find on *.pst on your drives . for future reference its wise to export a copy (file menu in outlook) as this way will definately you know where to find it. don't despair though as a full backup should mean that it is there somewhere.

This happened to me, or so I thought!! If you go to import under file in OE5 it should locate your missing files or directories. When I first loaded up OE5 I had three of my most important folders missing! But using this I got them back. Sounds simple but it's worth a try! Timbo

If you backed up your Windows folder there should a folder called Application Data and go to the Microsoft\Outlook Express\Mail and ther a files with .mbx and .idx extensions, as far as I know these are your Outlook databases for Inbox, Sent Items etc., just copy them back to your Outlook folder [don't delete them] and see if your stuff is there. I had this recently after I backed up on tape and formatted and couldn't find my stuff and when I copied that Applications Data folder back there they was all intact By the way mine is IE4 but I assume it uses the same folder name.

Mike Winder: The 98 upgrade reinstall went, but the system wouldn't IPL due to calling for some VXD's that it couldn't find in the registry. That's why I had to reinstall W95. I tried my first restore from the D disk with the option of not restoring any system entries from the registry, due to the new motherboard. Still was looking for unfound VXD's. I then restored without the registry altogether. Then it would IPL. I Couldn't find any recent .pst files when I looked after reading your suggestion.. Timbo: I did a reimport. It reimported all the folders, but any mail sent or received after I went to IE5 simply wasn't there in the appropriate folders. Ronnie Raitt: I restored the Application Data folder and subfolders from the backup I had performed to my D disk. There was no folder for Outlook Express, only Internet Explorer. And no files with .mbx or .idx extensions. I have Netscape Communicator on my system and had used it most of the time until IE5 came out. I looked in its mail files and found some stuff in files with .dbx extensions. These had all but the very last message I sent, but in a garbled and often unreadable format. Some portions of messages were not only out of sequence, but even in files that contained messages from other recipients, those files corresponding to different mail subfolders! I then tried to import mail into IE5 from Communicator and it created the .dbx files, but said it couldn't import all the stuff due an error. What it couldn't import were those latest messages done with IE5 in the first place. It appears that some file or internal list containing pointers to the messages or message parts is missing.

Jack McMonigle: Regarding 'Lost Outlook Express mail', did you ever find a solution to this problem? I noticed the email was dated back on 5/22/99. It seems that .mbx and .idx files were used prior to IE5 which now uses .dbx data files. Did you ever find a way to convert the .mbx files to .dbx or import the .mbx files into IE5? If so, I need a solution. Please help.

Recently my OE5 was barred to me because of an error message. Microsoft helpdesk eventually assisted me to reopen OE5, only to find that all my past email correspondence had disappeared. It was eventually found in C:/Windows/Application Data/Indentities folder. All the files appear to be there but I cannot open them. They are prefixed with a small icon of a small computer. (Microsoft tells me this should be a small Windows icon). The files all have the extension .dbx Can these files be renamed or does anyone have any other helpful advice. Microsoft contact person said the files were possible corrupted, but was not sure!! HELP. Eric