What is BPxand? Outlook, or Outlook Express? Check /what/ box to empty the
Recycle Bin? That is not the same as Deleted Items.

The two most common reasons for what you describe is disruption of the
compacting process, (never touch anything until it's finished), or bloated
folders. More on that below.

Why does OE insist on compacting folders when I close it?:
http://www.insideoe.com/faqs/why.htm#compact

Why Mail Disappears:
http://www.insideoe.com/problems/bugs.htm#mailgone

About File Corruption:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx

Recovery tools:

If you are running XP/SP2, and are fully patched, then you should have a
backup of your dbx files in the Recycle Bin, copied as bak files.

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first find the location
of the Message Store.

Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location of
your Outlook Express files. Press the Tab key to highlight the folder
location, then Ctrl+C. Close OE, then Start | Run | Ctrl+V will put the
location in the box - Click OK and you'll see the OE files. Otherwise, write
the location down and navigate to it in Windows Explorer.

In WinXP, the .dbx files are by default marked as hidden. To view these
files in Explorer, you must enable Show Hidden Files and Folders under Start

Close OE and then in Windows Explorer, click on the dbx file for the
missing, or empty, folder and drag it to the Desktop. It can be deleted
later once you have successfully restored the bak file. Minimize the Message
Store.

Open OE and, if the folder is missing, create a folder with the *exact* same
name as the bak file you want to restore but without the .bak. Eg: If the
file is Saved.bak, the new folder should be named Saved. Open the new folder
and then close OE. If the folder is there, but just empty, continue on to
the next step.

Open the Recycle bin and right click on the bak file for the folder in
question and click Restore. Open the Message Store back up and change the
file extension from .bak to .dbx. Close the Message Store and open OE. The
messages should now be back in the folder.

If the messages are successfully restored, you can go ahead and delete the
old dbx file that you moved to the Desktop.

If you do not have bak copies of your dbx files in the Recycle Bin, then:

DBXpress run in Extract From Disk Mode is the best chance to recover
messages:
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

And see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#4

A general warning to help avoid this in the future:

Do not archive mail in default OE folders. They will eventually become
corrupted. Create your own user defined folders for storing mail and move
your mail to them. Empty Deleted Items folder regularly. Keep user created
folders under 100MB, and Default folders as empty as is feasible.

Turn off e-mail scanning in your anti-virus program. It is a redundant layer
of protection that eats up CPUs, slows down sending and receiving, and
causes a multitude of problems such as time-outs, account setting changes
and has even been responsible for lose of messages. Your up-to-date A/V
program will continue to protect you sufficiently. For more, see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3

And backup often.

Backup and Restore:

http://www.insideoutlookexpress.com/backup/

http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx

And this good one click backup program.

Outlook Express Quick Backup (OEQB):

http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx

If you mean the option to empty Deleted Items upon exit you may still have
BAK files in the Recycle Bin.

This appears to be part of a thread, but since you didn't include anything I
really don't know what the problem is.

Bruce, I'm wondering if the steps you outlined below apply in my situation.  
I created a new OE6 account on a WinXP SP2 machine yesterday and popped the
mail from the 3rd party webserver.  The user had several messages stored in
folders on the webserver. When the mail popped, all of the mail, including
messages in the user created folders popped into the OE inbox.  I checked
"leave a copy of the messages on the server", so they were all still on the
webserver.  Unfortunately, I also checked "remove from the server when
deleted from "Deleted Items".  My goal was to mirror the users webmail
account in OE, folders and all.  I created the same folders in OE, then
deleted everything that had popped, so that I had a clean inbox to work with.
Normally at this point, I go back to the webserver, move the contents of one
of the users folders to the Inbox, then do a send and receive and once the
messages are in the OE Inbox, I move them to the appropriate folder.  For
some reason, I decided to delete the Deleted items folder and before I could
catch myself, most of the messages on the server were deleted.  How do I
recover these messages?  I do have Active Undelete software, but don't know
how to repopulate the messages into the users OE account.