I recently reinstalled my Windows 98 machine and attempted to restore all my
email messages from the backed up Outlook Express folder located in the
C:\WINDOWS\Application
Data\Identities\{77C3A4A0-DE84-11D9-A2C4-83B37F26FD42}\Microsoft\Outlook
Express directory.  However, I only succeeded to restore my inbox.dbx,
drafts.dbx and address book using Outlook Express 6.  I imported these
messages from the OE6 store directory using the original Outlook Express
folder backup in my Zip disk and selected all folders when I reached the
final step.  Unfortunately, the sent.dbx and delete.dbx mail boxes were not
restored as no messages were found in these locations afterwards in my OE
program.  The backed up Outlook Express folder contains two sent.dbx files
and two delete.dbx files.  One of the sent.dbx is quite big @ 12,412 kb and
contains alot of messages that I would like to retrieve.  I'm not concerned
about my delete.dbx file but my sent.dbx file is more important.  The problem
may be due to the fact that there are duplicate sent.dbx and delete.dbx files
in the backed up Outlook Express folder.  I even tried deleting the smaller
sent.dbx and tried importing the bigger sent.dbx file separately into my
current mail program but it I didn't succeed.  It went through the motions of
restoring from this file but it didn't actually restore any files afterwards.
I even checked the archive setting of the sent.dbx file to make sure that the
read only attribute was not checked as this sometimes makes a difference.  
Apart from using the import method for restoring, I also tried to restore my
mail boxes by replacing the existing Outlook Express folder in the
C:\WINDOWS\Application
Data\Identities\{77C3A4A0-DE84-11D9-A2C4-83B37F26FD42}\Microsoft\Outlook
Express directory with the backed up Outlook Express directory in my ZIP disk
but it yielded only the same results i.e. my old inbox and drafts were
restored but the old messages in my sent and delete mail boxes were not.  At
this stage, I have tried virtually everything and I am disappointed that I
unable to retrieve my sent.dbx file despite being present in the backup
folder.  Maybe it is corrupt or it is just a Microsoft windows problem.  
Anyway, I would appreciate any input or assistance with this problem.

Thanks,

Martin