If you have a virus program, say from your isp, that advertises spam blocker - that's most likely why you see that. OE, used to be smart enough not to bother telling you that mail has arrived if it does a block sender. Things change though sometimes. I use another kind of spaminator. Oh,,fwiw\[/ for a long time in OE, I did use the simple Block Sender ... one day decided to clear them all out and start fresh. It was amazing how fast OE worked suddenly when it wasnt checking each mail for that huge list of blocks.

The compress feature is really no big deal and by default is set to act every 100 times your e-mail client closes. The action can be stopped or the numeric changed. I'm on a Vista system with Windows Mail right now. I don't recall if the location is the same for OE. Activate the mail client>Tools>Options>Advanced Tab> on the bottom of the tab click Maintenance button> make adjustments close>Apply. If this is not exactly correct for OE it will give you a general approach for finding the feature. As Owbist reports it removes nothing. The action is exactly the same as the option provided in the Disk Cleanup utility. When used more data is put in less space. I would leave it alone. DA

Might use XP search feature and click the advanced search so it finds hidden files. Search .dbx (thats dot dbx) Try deleting the 'Deleted Items.dbx' file and reboot... file will be at a path something like this.... C:\Documents and Settings\mike\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\(91BE4C73-0506-4C05-A470-2E9CE853BE1D)\Microsoft\Outlook Express\Deleted Items.dbx

Just a quick update to anyone who may (or may not!) be interested in my original problem... After literally weeks of frustrating searches, futile attempts and dead-ends, I wiped Outlook Express from my computer and downloaded Thunderbird...it's a real gem! I did lose my old address book (but luckily I had a replica within Hotmail), but DID keep all sent/deleted/saved messages...can easily rebuild address book as people email me...messages to my old OE address still arrive at new Thunderbird one, so I'm a very happy chappy! Regards to all, Shax