Outlook Express losing messages

[CelticWhisper]

We're contending with an OE problem right now wherein one of our salesfolk's PCs crashed while he was deleting messages in Outlook Express, and when he rebooted he found that:

-The messages he deleted were present in the Deleted Items folder

-No other mail was present in Outlook Express.

Part of the problem is that we outsource our E-mail service to a 3rd party provider (not my decision to make, and not anything I have control over) and the complicating factor that the third party does not perform backups of our E-mail. I don't know if that's a contract detail or if it's just something they don't offer.

At any rate, the scenario is such that once E-mail messages are downloaded from the POP3 server, they're only present on the client system. And this client system just vomited all over the office.

So, any pointers, or does anyone know of any recovery wizardry we can perform?

As always, I really appreciate your help. You folks are the best.

[cluberti]

You could try to recover the old file data via a file restoration program like OnTrack's, but if the file itself is still on disk and not corrupt, I'm not sure what else can be done. Without a decent backup, you may be SOL (and might want to consider using an email provider that at least provides IMAP access).

[CelticWhisper]

Okay, that's kinda what we were afraid of. Wanted to check and see if there were any avenues we might be overlooking, though.

Still open to suggestions, but we'll gear up to be bearers of bad news (AKA the IT guy's lot in life).

Thanks!