WARRENASIA BLOGGIN'

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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!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 8:56 pm (IST) and is filed under S/W Trouble-shooting Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.