Outlook Express default settings are such that they provide protection against viruses and malware. The e-mail sending and receiving in plain text and not allowing to open or save doubtful attachments are few of the examples of such configurations. Outlook Express detects the potentiality of virus presence in any attachment by its extension (such as, *.exe, *.pif etc.). It blocks all the access to such an attachment. But if the attachment extension falls under low-risk, the attachment opens. So in case, Outlook Express is reconfigured and/or the attachment (containing virus) has an extension different from what OE recognizes as of high-risk, odds are that a virus may infect your data, especially Outlook Express folder(s). In such cases, you may lose the ability to access the contained e-mails and get compelled to look for an Outlook Express Recovery solution.To illustrate such problems of virus infection, consider the below practical instance in Outlook Express:

1-You receive an e-mail message with an attachment containing virus
2-You try to delete this message, but the application hangs on each attempt. Thus, you cannot delete it and the message stays unread
3-You change the setting of Inbox to view the unread messages
4-The next time when you open Outlook Express, the infected message automatically opens up.
5-After this, you observe that Outlook Express fails to perform normal e-mail functions such as, sending or receiving an e-mail message, opening the folder(s) etc.

Cause

Your Outlook Express folder(s), most probably Inbox, is infected from virus.

Solution

To solve the above problem, you can try to implement the following sequence of steps:

1-Close Outlook Express
2-Locate the Inbox.dbx file. For this click Start | Find or Search | All files and folders and type the name of file.
3-Rename Inbox.dbx to Inbox2.dbx
4-Start Outlook Express, a new Inbox will be created
5-Create a new folder as oldInbox and quit Outlook Express
6-Copy Inbox2.dbx to this new folder- oldInbox.dbx
7-Open Outlook Express and move all e-mails from oldInbox to Inbox except for the affected one
8-Quit Outlook Express and delete oldInbox.dbx and Inbox2.dbx

If the above trick doesn’t help, restore from backup or use a third-party utility to Recover Outlook Express. A Outlook Express Recovery utility can repair and restore corrupted *.dbx file(s) and restore them at a safe location.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook Express Recovery( www.outlookexpress-recovery.com ) is a powerful utility that repairs corrupted *.dbx files created with Outlook Express 5 and 6. The advanced tool can Recover Outlook Express in each instance of corruption. It provides a simple installation process and quick recovery using effective scanning algorithms. The tool is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2003, and 2000.