Dudleys Diary

if there are any computer geeks and or geniuses reading this. Yesterday I was on the computer and a message popped up and said it was time to compact the messages in my mailbox. I have done this many many times in the past without problem so I clicked to run everything through my computers version of a trash compactor. Problem was this time something different happened and it was not a good thing. When I went back into Outlook Express, I discovered that my messages were not compacted, they were GONE to God knows where. All of the messages in my inbox, sent, outbox, deleted, and draft mailboxes had disappeared. I got on Google to try and find a way to restore the lost messages but all I could find was companies wanting to sell me high priced software to restore the messages. It did not cost Dudley anything to lose the messages and I'll be damned if I am going to spend money to restore them. If any one knows a FREE fix to this problem please let me know. While I am on this subject, does anyone know a good free utility that can be downloaded to run on a computer to take care of all of the various pests that are out there. I have been running a program by Lavasoft called Ad Aware for some time with good results. It was FREE and worked well. That is until it somehow got corrupted and ceased to function. I went to download it again and the once FREE program is not so FREE any more. It comes with a bunch of strings attached now. Dudley went to the store a few years ago and purchased software from one of the big names of virus protection and installed it on his computer and found it to be pretty much worthless. If anyone knows of any good FREE utilities for restoring lost emails or for zapping computer pests, please let me know.