Deleting email in Outlook Express

[edgavin42]

My wife and I both use Outlook Express for email. I have no problem deleting emails, but when my wife tries to delete hers, they go to the "deleted" file and then they proceed right back into the inbox. She has about six hundred messages now in her inbox. I've tried to compare the settings on my email set-up with those on hers and can find no differences. Obviously, I might be missing something; any suggestions?
Thanks.

[soybean]

Exactly what happens after she deletes messages?  Will those messages in the Deleted Items folder stay there long enough to empty/delete all messages in the Deleted Items folder?

Does she have her Outlook Express set to leave messages on the server for a certain time after she downloads messages?  I'm wondering whether what's really happening here is that she is getting duplicate/multiple downloads of the same messages, not that messages are mysteriously moving out of the Deleted Items folder back into the Inbox.  If she deletes messages into the Deleted Items folder and leaves OE open, can you actually verify that messages move back into Inbox?

If the latter is, indeed, occuring, then I'd suspect a virus or malware problem.

[edgavin42]

Hello Soybean,
Thanks for your response. Last week when my wife told me about this problem I tried deleting about twenty emails. The delete seemed to go smoothly, and clever me thought to go immediately to the deleted folder and delete them from that. This bug beat me to the draw: I watched the number of emails in the inbox just start shooting up again. I'm not sure they were the exact same emails I deleted, but it happened immediately after I deleted that bunch of emails. Now, as to virus or malware. About a month ago I inadvertently opened something that brought in an advertising virus, as the man at Symantec explained. He had to take over my computer and worked for about an hour and a half trying to get rid of that bugger. If he did that, am I missing something, i.e. did he get rid of the virus on my part of the computer and not on hers?
That does not seem logical. When I log onto the computer I don't have any of these computer idiosyncracies that my wife is having. Come to think of it, her desktop is completely blue, the picture is gone and we've been unsuccessful in trying to get the desktop picture back (any picture at all). Maybe I should get in touch with Symantec again. What do you think? Again, thanks for getting back to me.

[soybean]

He had to take over my computer and worked for about an hour and a half trying to get rid of that bugger. If he did that, am I missing something, i.e. did he get rid of the virus on my part of the computer and not on hers?

You said Symantec helped you with your computer but not your wife's computer. Therefore, nothing was resolved on her computer during your session with Symantec.  So, yes, I think you should contact Symantec again. 

[edgavin42]

Sorry for the lack of clarity. We're both on the same computer; she logs on under her name, and I under mine. But we're using the same computer. Curiouser and curiouser! It's probably still a Symantec problem, do you think?

[soybean]

Try this.  With OE closed, disconnect the computer from the Internet; in other words, physically disconnect the cord from your modem or router.  Then, open OE to your wife's email account and delete messages from the Inbox into the Deleted Items folder.  Then, select the Deleted Items folder and empty it.  Do you see the same behavior in this situation? What happens?

[edgavin42]

Thanks for your prompt reply. Your idea sounded really good, so I followed your instructions, but when I opened her OE, lo and behold the inbox was already cleared of the six hundred or so messages that had been there the last time we looked. I don't know what happened, but those emails that kept reappearing in her inbox were completely deleted. Nothing was in the "Deleted" file either. So I didn't have to continue with what you advised - i.e. delete while we were not connected to the internet, a suggestion that made a lot of sense.  I've come to accept that there are idiosyncracies at play in the computer, but this one is striking (for me). Have you ever encountered anything like this before? Again, thank you for your help, it's greatly appreciated.

[patio]

To me it sounds like Norton Protected Recycle Bin doing whatever it wants to do on a whim as usual...

[ale52]

Norton...

Alan <><