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Problem:

A client called in today - email was refusing to download in to Outlook Express, using POP3.

I replicated the email setup on one of my office computers and it worked fine. Then he brought his laptop to my office and we tried downloading email using my Internet Service Provider. It worked for a few minutes and failed again. The error was: “An uknown error has occurred. No error number: 0×800C0133″

After confirming with my server admins that nothing was causing a fault on the servers, I decided to do a little research. Here’s what I found out:

Solution:

Outlook Express stores all email in a folder. On a Windows XP machine, it is typically in C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{<hex>}\Microsoft\Outlook Express.
In here are files with file extentions of DBX - Inbox.dbx, Outbox.dbx, Sent Items.dbx - you get the drift. Now, apparently, Outlook Express doesn’t like email database files being larger than 2 GB or so. My client’s Inbox.dbx file was 1.99 GB.

I shut down Outlook Express, renamed Inbox.dbx to Inbox Backup.dbx.
- Then I restarted Outlook Express.
- Outlook Express automatically re-creates the missing Inbox.dbx file.
- The Inbox folder is now empty in Outlook Express.
- Then, I right-clicked on Local Folders and created a New Folder called “Old Inbox“.
- Close Outlook Express again.
- Delete the Old Inbox.dbx file and rename Inbox Backup.dbx to Old Inbox.dbx
- Start Outlook Express again.

All your old email will be in the Old Inbox folder and fresh email will be received in the empty Inbox folder.

Additional Notes:

If this post helps you in resolving a similar issue, do post a comment!

Problem:

Windows XP doesn’t allow you to format a drive larger than 32 GB in FAT32 - you would essentially need to format it in NTFS. But sometimes, we need to format a large drive in FAT32 - specially external hard disks that we would plug into different computers at different points of time, and NTFS security permissions shouldn’t stop us from reading/writing data.

Solution:

You could either use a third-party disk partitioning program like Partition Magic, that would allow you to do the needful or you could just pop in an MS-DOS boot disk. Yes, DOS!

Warning: The procedure below will erase all existing data from your hard disk.

• Restart your computer, booting through a CD or floppy, to DOS
• At the DOS prompt, type fdisk and Hit ENTER
• Answer Y to answer questions
• fdisk is pretty self-explanatory, so just create the partitions you want/need
• Now, exit fdisk
• At the DOS prompt, type format d: (if D is the drive that needs to be formatted)
• format will run for a while and there you have it - a partition larger than 32 GB and in FAT32.

Additional Notes:

Though some experts say that the maximum size for a FAT32 partition can be 2 TB, I’m not absolutely sure about it. Microsoft says that fdisk can create a partition upto a maximum of 512 GB. You would probably need to use a third-party application to create a larger partition.

I have created single FAT32 partitions on a 40 GB Samsung, a 60 GB Maxtor and an 80 GB Western Digital. Anyone who’s created any other size FAT32 partitions, do let me know.

Problem:

You keep getting an error message when trying to defragment a drive, saying that chkdsk is scheduled to run for a particular disk at the next startup and so defrag cannot run; but chkdsk doesn’t run at startup. It could be possible that the dirty bit is set for that drive and you’re gonna have to follow the steps below to fix it:

Solution:

1. Open a command prompt window (START > RUN > type cmd > hit ENTER)
2. Type fsutil dirty query c: (if C is the drive that’s not defragmenting)
3. This will tell you if the dirty bit is set for that particular drive
4. Next type chkntfs /x c:
5. Restart your computer
6. Open a command prompt window again.
7. Type chkdsk /f /r c: to do a manual check of your disk
8. Once chkdsk has completed, type fsutil dirty query c: again and it should confirm that the dirty bit is no longer set.

You should, now, be able to defrag your drive!

Additional Notes:

We encountered this problem on an HP laptop a few days ago and fixed it. We’ve not seen this problem too often in the past though.