What is a dbx file?

[ChrichtonsGirl]

This is probably a dumb question, but in lieu of shelling out more money than I have right now to buy more RDRAM (saving for new system later this year), I've been working to clean up my existing files to improve my performance (which is hovering around 77% when I have Explorer and Outlook open, frequently dipping to less than 50% by afternoon if I don't reboot).

Anyway, I do all the routine maintenance stuff like clearing my cookies, temp. Internet files and easy stuff like keeping my mailbox cleared and getting rid of unecessary files. I also do Scan Disk and Defrag regularly, which helps for a little bit.

Long story short, I was chatting with a friend about files that you never really know you have that can be cleaned out and he mentioned clearing my inbox.dbx, sentitems.dbx and deleteditems.dbx files. I found them and looked at them, but they appear to be encrypted (?) - I don't want to accidentally zap something important, but they're big enough that deleting them might help my quest to get rid of useless junk on my system.

Any suggestions?

 

[AndyHui]

DBX are Microsoft Outlook Express mail folders.

 

[ChrichtonsGirl]

Ah. So it's redundant data if I've cleared the old messages from Outlook Express or they are the folders themselves and I have to leave them alone? I haven't used OE in about a year, but I wouldn't be surprised if I've still got junk in there.

 

[AndyHui]

The DBX files are the folders themselves and contain the mails.

If you think they are big, then you can go into OE, go to file on the menu, and then compress all folders.

 

[anton]

My guess will be is that if you will just delete them, when you will run OE next time, it will just create them empty... but for the caution just run OE now and remove all the mail from those folders ; )

 

[ChrichtonsGirl]

Thanks for the suggestions and help, Andy Hui and anton. I just opened OE and deleted the junk that was left in it. I'm glad I didn't just zap the DBX files. 🙂