Recycle Bin Question

[Joy]

I was helping a friend with his computer today and he has something I've
never seen before. His Recycle Bin is full of .bak files that seem to be
from a variety of sources: Some are Outlook Express (including one that
says Inbox and one that says Drafts!), but also files that he has in My
Documents. Does anyone know how these would have landed up in the Recycle
Bin and with a .bak extension? He's afraid to delete them in case he might
list the originals.

 

[Randy]

The Outlook Express files happen when OE does a maintenance and compresses
and does a backup the OE folders. It happens every 30 days on my computer.
The others are also from a maintenance of some sort but can't remember the
name. If everything is working in OE and he has the doc. files in My
Documents then he can delete them. They are just backup files thus the .bak
extension.

Randy

 

[Joy]

Thanks, Randy, but is it normal for the maintenance to put backup files in
the Recycle Bin? I had never seen this before.

 

[Parrôtt]

Thanks, Randy, but is it normal for the maintenance to put backup files in
the Recycle Bin? I had never seen this before.

I think it's normal for the .bak files to be sent straigt to the recycle
bin. It happens when OE does it to me then I use either EE or CCleaner to
empty it.


God Bless...

 

[Gerry]

Joy

Outlook Express contains a feature, which compacts the dbx files it
creates. This has been very problematic over the years and a bit over 12
months ago it changed this feature so that the system automatically
compacts all dbx files when the user has closed Outlook Express 100
times. Before compacting each folder it is copied to the Recycle Bin as
a bak file. If the user interupts the compacting process e.g. by
switching off the computer it is likely that the dbx folder currently
being compacted will corrupt and the messages therein can become
irretrievable. In this situation the folder can be replaced by the copy
in the Recycle Bin. If the users current Outllook Express folders are
intact the Recycle Bin should be empied. Outlook Express dbx files can
be quite large so emptying the Recycle Bin can be important after
compacting, where there is limited free disk space.
http://www.insideoe.com/

With the introduction of Vista Outlook Express has been replaced by
Windows Mail which is virtually identical to Outlook Express except that
the way messages are stored has been changed so that compaction is no
longer necessary.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Joy]

Gerry,

Thank you so very much for this detailed explanation! I had heard about
the "every 100 times" of at least asking about compacting. I had something
strange in the past (more than once), where when I "let" it compact when it
asked, some of the contents of the lower (alphabetically) folders in my list
of personal folders were deleted! Wish I had known then that I could find
them doing a current back of my OE - I use an excellent program called
Express Assist).