opening e-mails safely

[bluthund]

Hi foxyloxley,

make sure that your hidden files and file extensions are viewable.
You can access those functions from 'Folder Options' in My Computer.
Leave the My Computer window open....
Open OE, click Tools, then Options.
Click the Maintenance tab, then the Store Folder button.
You should see the path to the location of the stored .dbx files.
Right-click the path and click Select All.
Right-click the path again and click Copy.

Go back to My Computer and right-click in the Address bar and click paste.
Press Enter, which will take you to the location where these files are stored.
At this point you want to make sure that OE is closed, because backing up these
files with OE open may result in corrupt back-up files. So go back to OE and click
Cancel on the Store Folder dialog box, then click Cancel on the Options window.
Exit OE before proceeding.

Now you can copy the files you need. Don't move/delete them. You can back-up to
another folder, floppy or cd.

Once you have OE fixed, create a new folder and name it something distinctly different
than Inbox, Outbox, etc. Do this by right-clicking Local Folder in OE and choose New Folder.
Follow the above instructions to get to the location again, close OE and copy/move your
.dbx files into the new folder you created (Drag and drop works). You may want to create several new folders for the various categories. To keep it coherent, you could create an INcopy, OUTcopy, DELcopy, SENTcopy folder. If you copy a back-up folder into a folder that has some .dbx files in it, these will be overwritten, hence the need for new seperate folders.
You can move e-mails later, once you are in OE.
By creating a special folder for "bad" e-mails, you can use this technique to lift them onto an isolated box.
Let me know if this works for you.

g8way2u

[bluthund]

Oops,

I'm not sure if this works when you loose the old SID, but it may be worth a try.

g8way2u

[darkes]

Originally posted here by foxyloxley
something that caught my eye ??
from Darkes: re: the DBX files in OE.
I (again) managed to trash my OE settings, have had to generate a new account, with a new SID ?? and as such I am unable to access the old files ?? which include some job references.

So, the question is 'could someone tell me how to access my old DBX files , preferably, so that I can re-fit ??? them into the NEW account.

bluthund is quite correct, but there is another way of doing this.

It doesn't matter that your SID has changed.

Search for the directory in which your original dbx files exist (you'll need to search for hidden files), and copy it or make a note of the name, in particular the SID bit.

From your new install of OE, select File->Import->Messages. Assuming you are running OE6 (or OE5 !!), select the OE6 option, and the first option, and choose 'main identity'.
After you have hit next, change the SID in the directory name from your current one to your original one, and that should do the trick.

You can import messages from multiple previous copies of OE etc. using this method.
If you should have a problem then you can instead copy all the dbx files to a new folder, say oemails. Then do the same thing but select the OE store directory option instead, and point it to the new folder you have just created (C:\oemails in this case).

[elmurado]

foxy try this www.tomsterdam.com
there's an app called dbextract which is the dog's b's when it comes to recovering dbx files which may have gone missing.

[darkes]

As a final comment on this, there is no need to use anything fancy to transfer a single dodgy email to a test box. Just set up a virus folder in OE on the test box, and copy the virus.dbx file from the live box to the appropriate directory on the test box (it will fit on a floppy!). If you want to make things easy, then change the ridiculously long directory name on the test box to something more meaningful.

The only reason I’m suggesting this approach is that firstly it is bullet proof, because the malware has not been installed on your live PC, and cannot have been accidentally used.

Secondly, you also have the text/HTML code of the original email to examine including header information, which is often of equal importance in trying to work out what the virus was up to, where it came from etc.