Email messages vanish.

[scanscanscan]

I have a compaq presario v410 and run windows 95 and outlook express and am registered with bt anytime.
I have the bt anytime set up disk if this helps.
My big problem is......
Online my inbox is empty and all previous emails have vanished.
Then new emails arrive ok and are read, the machine is then switched off and on restart these new emails also have vanished.
However the bottom right message is that I have 784 emails 0 unread, when emails arrive the number increases but then the above process repeats and the messages vanish the new increased total remains displayed.
The address book is still there and its contents remain available.
It seems impossible to read say an email from last month or to scroll back through the past email read list as it is nolonger displayed.
I suspect I may have exceeded the capacity of my inbox but I am stumped as how to delete any emails as they are not displayed.
Any help as to how to dump these 784 emails and reset the outlook express so that it retains and displays in the future past emails?
As you can see I really do not know which way to turn to fix this problem so a click this do that step by step fix is needed as I am very thick and very old.

[fobotcso]

In the words of the song: "How long has this been going on?"

Have you recently upgraded your original Outlook Express - which would have been Version 4 - to Version 5, or higher? The e-mail formatting is slighly different. This fact is normally not noticed until you try to import an e-mail into Version 5 that you have exported from Version 4 as an "eml" file.

What was the last action you did to the system before this problem reared its ugly head?

One thing is certain, your e-mails are intact and there is no reason to lose them. There is no limit to the size of the Inbox that I know of. I have seen over 2000 e-mails in my inbox. Such a large inbox just slows down the speed of loading of OE when you open it.

[scanscanscan]

Goodness gracious me!
Problem is nolonger.
All fixied by listening to Mr Ashook of bt help desk.
Re running of the bt access to the internet setup cd rom.
Followed by a check on my computer settings.
My compuer now going Boom didi Boom etc etc.
Ashook for prime minister :) :) :)