As a user stuck on an antique DUN I recognize your concern regarding your e-mail. It is my guess you are not speaking of your e-mail in general, but rather e-mails that are graphic intensive or have photo attachments. Since you are on a DUN it will make little difference if you convert to a web-based account or not. Your system will still have to download the e-mails and their attachments into a temporary file for the web-based client to open them. There are a couple of things that you can do, but I am going to wait to see if my assumption is correct. I do as Gene reports and automatically purge my deleted e-mail upon closing Windows Mail, and previously OE. However, if you decide to enroll in this option once the e-mail is deleted it is gone forever. If Windows ever wants to compact your e-mail allow it to do so. DA

One of those messages that you "forwarded" (which you should never do)probably had a nasty enclosed. It could be a trojan rather than a virus. Do you have an antispyware program on your computer like "Malwarebytes" its free. Suggest you download it, install it, update it then run it. Another good one which complements Malwarebytes is Spywareblaster, Its always running in the background and keeps these nasties from loading. You just have to update it weekly or so and its free as well. What service package of XP do you have (hopefully XPSP3) To find out right click on "my computer" select properties and that info should be in the box that appears

If you have already emptied/deleted them from the Deleted Items folder they are gone absent a successful use of an application such as RECUVA which will be iffy. If you haven't and cannot find any Deleted Items folder, have you opened the Local Folder and/or any named dedicated folder by clicking on the + in front of it? This will reveal an account's tree. DA

Is it possible you have reset the mouse buttons? Right click usually brings up a small menu window. In the case of IE you have options including delete and Properties, clicking Properties then Details followed by Message source gives one the opportunity to read the email by using the back door so to speak. It does not open the email going this route.