Microsoft Outlook Express allows users to use a preset format to send and receive messages from their personal computer. One can use higher quality graphics as allowed by many free web based email services. Outlook Express runs from and stores files using your computer’s internal hard drive. Outlook Express uses a proprietary file type that is a .DBX file. There are available quality software programs designed to specifically search for and recover Outlook Express DBX files. It is important when purchasing an e-mail recovery program that you specifically buy one built for your unique e-mail recovery problem.
While it is true that very often general purpose data recovery programs can find the emails, they may not be able to recognize the structural content of a Microsoft Outlook DBX file. This is especially important when a data recovery program returns to you an error message of unable to read boot sectors. Boot sectors are simply listings of file types but if the boot sectors are damaged on your computer’s hard drive and you attempt to locate a DBX file using them, obviously you will fail. However, when using better quality email recovery programs that recognize the overall DBX file structure you should successfully recover deleted Outlook Express emails.