Posting solution to errors 0x800C013A and 0x80004005 in Outlook Express (Win XP)

DGuess

2003-11-16 17:40:21 UTC

As good an explanation as I've read in a long time. The nice part about it
is that you researched it out which few have the ability to do or the
inkling to attempt to try.

Outlook Express is known to have issues with large message stores. Results
can vary from creating a new Inbox(1).dbx file (assuming the problem file is
the Inbox of course), to overwriting it completely. A few rare cases I have
seen have forced the user to create a total new Identity (new message stores
and registry settings, system files are rarely a problem with OE) and
sometimes an upgrade to XP or IE/OE6 can cause this as well for unknown
reasons.

In some cases of the Inbox.dbx files, there can be a Inbox.dbt which is the
file renamed during compacting. In some cases, it has failed thus creating
a new Inbox.dbx file.

As to the TIF folder location, yes, this has been a royal PITA in the past.
OE is supposed to remove those files but it won't. These files are hidden
thus overlooked as a problem. You will see that it begins with the [x]
files, where x is a number (sounds like a math class doesn't it?) from [1]
to [99] where it will begin to create CA* files (which are all empty -
blank) along with the wbkxxx.tmp files which are the text of the messages.

Most of the storage problem is in the ways the dbx files are structured. 512
kb sections of each message stored in the dbx files in a way that does
prevent any code from running (such as a worm) should it be accessed but it
causes slower access to the files. That's one reason why there is such a
slow response to Outlook Express.

Another major problem is that these dbx files get so fragmented. The heavier
the use of the file, the more fragmented it becomes. When you top
fragmentation off with a dose of file structure, you see even slower
performance. When you add an extra topping of large files, you start to
verge on corruption. Windows file system begins to have a problem accessing
these files. It's like there is a slight memory lapse at some points,
especially when writing to the file, that it loses it's place. When this
happens, you lose the file structure and then access to the file from within
OE.

The work around is to not allow the files to get so large, remove old
unwanted messages, move messages to other folders (user created), manually
compact while offline, scandisk and defrag and of course a good backup
handy.

Message rules, while they are not sophisticated, can help do the automatic
moving of messages from the Inbox to another folder. You can set them up by
the sender's email address, specific words or subject line, size or
attachment (plus a couple of other options such as priority or security
attachment). This does help keep the Inbox lower in quantity of messages.
Manually moving helps as well but most people prefer automation, where they
have to do little work or thinking (these are computers and should do it all
for them).

The Inbox isn't the only problem file however. The Sent Items too grows
larger and larger all the time. Another candidate for moving messages out of
it on a regular basis. While message rules won't work on them
automatically, rules can be set up to manually move them. I have several
rules set up in OE to do this. The rules are set up and left unchecked so
they will not be processed. I can go into the Message Rules, select one and
manually apply it to the Sent Items folder.

Another major problem is the way OE stores it's folder structure and
newsgroups. It does this all in one file, the Folders.dbx file. The larger
this file gets (usually because of having a news server that contains 30,000
groups) the possibility of problems it can have. Tom Koch wrote some info on
how to work around this at http://www.tomsterdam.com. The site is worth
reading and adding to your Favorites. When compacting manually, you may see
that compact can not continue because a folder is in use. If you move that
message box out of the way you may see that it is the Folders.dbx file that
halted the whole thing. Sometimes you can't, no matter how many times you tr
y to compact it (followed by a restart of OE), it will remain with the same
error message. If OE should continue to run, be prepared that one day it
may not start and renaming this file will be one of the ways to get it
running again. I mentioned above about compacting several times then
restarting OE and compacting again. This CAN cause the file to quit causing
this error message to pop up. It's not 100% but has worked for me in the
past.

Archiving old mail in the Inbox and Sent Items can lead to sure disaster, be
it small where a new file is actually created for the Inbox or other folder,
to major where the file is totally lost. Recovery can be done but it too
isn't exactly 100% effective. Any section of the file that is overwritten is
pretty well lost. Steve Cochran has written several tools to help in this,
with one being free, DBXtract (http://www.oehelp.com) and two others with
additional abilities for sale at a reasonable price. I wrote Outlook Express
Freebie Backup as a simple backup program. It will export specific registry
entries or all of them related to OE's functioning, along with a backup of
the dbx files. While it does only go to a specified folder the user creates,
it does at the least, allow for a single location of the registry entries
and dbx files to be backed up to the user's choice of backup software, be it
CD, Zip, mapped drive or other. Since the file sizes vary way too much and
since adding CD-R ability to it would cost me money and since it is free,
it's best to let them choose what they wish to do with the data. I've just
automated the process where the user doesn't have to know what to back up
and where to look. I deal with users on a daily basis that, even after years
of working with a computer, file management is something they tend to not
want to learn to deal with. I can't force them, all I can do is make
suggestions and show them how if they so choose. That's all anyone can do.

So, should anyone be still awake after reading this, just try to do the
following and it will help keep OE running smoothly.

1) Move messages you wish to keep to other folders.
2) Remove unwanted messages.
3) Archive, in another OE folder you create, any old messages from the Inbox
AND the Sent Items folders. Keep these two folders file size low.
4) Empty the Deleted Items folders. Yes, it is a "last chance" folder to
recover deleted messages you may have done, but the Deleted Items folder is
just that, deleted messages. Empty it.
5) File | Work Offline then followed by a File | Folders | Compact All -
manually compacting after the above helps. Here is when you can get a whiff
of a problem with a DBX file, and usually the Folders.dbx file.
6) Close everything down and do a good scandisk and/or defrag. This works
wonders at times just by itself and can help speed up OE.
7) Try to keep a current backup. Don't confuse backup and archiving. They
are not the same thing. Backup is for that rainy day that you need to
restore a file while archiving is getting the messages out of OE
altogether.If you want to archive things for later, DBXtend
(http://www.oehelp.com) is useful for being able to read the message stores
without OE. It will read the DBX files without having to extract any
messages.

There are several ways to backup the data, (Internet Explorer included),
below is some information and programs available. There are other programs
as well written for OE, though I have never tested them along with the
native backup program in Windows.

Extensive instructions for manual transfer or backup/restore:

http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/backup/

Free program which will transfer or backup/restore for you:

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

Shareware program which will do same, with more features:

http://www.tweakie.com ($15 with 30-day free trial)

Thank you for your post, maybe it will help others as you have mentioned,
but then, things would have to change like people actually researching or
reading previously posted information instead of the I have a problem fix it
for me now....

Post by Temp Account
Hi,
After spending whole day researching and troubleshotting these issues, I
just wanted to post some of the solutions to these OE errors for those who
may be searching Newsgroups for the solution.
I use Windows XP and currently have over 120,000 messages in OE and my OE
folder contains 9GB of folder files (dbx). While OE surprisingly still holds
up, at one time I had to repair some corrupted folders, while this week I
got hit with the errors 0x800C013A and "unknown error ... 0x80004005".
Finally, after dealing with these two, my OE is back up and working.
The error 0x800C013A turned out to be related to large size of an email
folder. Removing a few of the largest messages and compacting the most-often
used folder fixed the issue.
Note: a large folder size can sometimes cause Outlook Express not to
retrieve emails at all and report a variety of errors. There is no specific
size of the folder or the amount of messages in the folder that can trigger
such errors. Some of my non-problem folders are much larger and store many
more messages than those that cause issues. It seems though that 250MB
folder size is about as much as OE can take for an active, frequently
accessed folder.
Now onto "unknown error ... 0x80004005", which caused me most trouble, as it
is an "unknown" error and probably could be caused by a variety of reasons.
In my case the error was happening in the middle of OE downloading the
messages from the server. After some tests I discovered that it happens only
with large emails, for example larger than 400Kb. Other, smaller emails
could be downloaded OK, but once a large email was encountered, OE would get
busy downloading it for a while, then right when the message should finish
downloading and appear in the folder, OE suddenly would stop and show the
error 0x80004005.
- try deleting Pop3uidl.dbx
- try renaming "Inbox.dbx" to something else, possibly "Inbox.old"
(both files are located in the folder shown when you right-click on the
Inbox folder and view Properties)
- try compacting your folders (OE -> File -> Folder -> Compact All Folders)
I tried all of the above methods and none helped, thus I did a test and
renamed the whole "Outlook Express" folder to something else, then created a
new, empty "Outlook Express" folder. When restarting OE, OE recreated all
the folders fresh, thus I didn't have any messages and couldn't have any
possible problems related to large folder sizes. Still, "unknown error ...
0x80004005" could not be solved. I reinstalled Outlook Express, still no
improvement.
Finally I run Trace Logs on Disk IO and discovered unusual activity in the
standard Windows Temp folder (C:\Documents and Settings\(user)\Local
Settings\Temp in my case). It turned out that I had over 70,000 files in
that folder and had to clean them up. After removing almost all those files
OE started working again! Yeah!
And shame on me for not cleaning this crap more often... (what confused me
that no other problems were occurring in my Windows XP, therefore I didn't
think of looking at the Temp folder.)
Again, the error "unknown error ... 0x80004005" probably means that Windows
or OE is having unspecified problems that cannot be easily explained, thus
the solution that worked for me may not work for everyone.
If you have any unusual Windows errors that may be Disk IO related, try
using the "Performance" tool in Control Panel (Windows XP Professional and
other Pro/Server Windows versions), go to the "Trace Logs" section and setup
a Log for everything, especially Disk I/O with Page Faults and File Details.
This log can grow into Megabytes within seconds, thus start it very shortly
before the error happens, then stop the log. Use Trace Dump to convert the
Log into a CSV file

(http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/tracedm

Post by Temp Account
p-o.asp), then load the file into Excel, MS Access, or another database and
take a quick look. If you see thousands of PageFaultTransitionFault errors
then the nearby FileIO events should point to the paths/files that Windows
is so extensively using and may be having problems with.
Anyway, that's about it. Hope this info will be helpful to someone.
Cheers,
Konrad