Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

In outlook express I get Msimn causing error in DIRECTDB.DLL

Jan 26, 2005 3:20AM PST

I also posted this in Windows ME forum and
then realized that it should be here..sorry
about that.

I am running Windows ME, I have Outlook
Express and 6 email account identities.
In one of my identities whenever I try to
work the emails, that is delete, forward, or
write I get this message:

Msimn has caused an error in DIRECTDB.DLL
Msimn will now close.
If you continue to experience this problem
try restarting your computer.

Of course, I have tried that and it still is
happening.

Also after resarting I get the message in that
identity that Outlook Express did not shut down
properly the last time you viewed a message.

Can anyone offer guidance. I sure do not want to
lose my files on this identity but since I cannot
forward the files to another email box I am in
trouble.

Mark Johnson

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
MSIMN has caused an error
May 6, 2005 5:59AM PDT

Hi Mark,

Has your problem been solved and if so, how? I have the same difficulty with Outlook Express 6 and ME, with a single mailbox. I would appreciate any direction.
Thanks,
Victor Hirsch

- Collapse -
Outlook express error
May 24, 2005 3:37AM PDT

I am running windows 98 with the same error have you resolved you problem yet if so what was the fix?

- Collapse -
Try this.
May 27, 2005 5:01PM PDT

The problem may be that an Outlook Express folder is way overloaded and may be corrupted.

A possible solution is to clean out your e-mail folders. Delete e-mails you do not need, then delete everything in the Deleted Items folder.

Next, save messages you want to keep in a non-OE folder on your hard drive. To do that, open e-mails you want to save. Click on File/Save As, and save to your chosen folder.

Then Compact your folders. First, under File, click on Work Offline. Then, also in File, click on Folder and then Compact All Folders.

Turn Work Offline off when you are done.

You might also check out Microsoft Knowledge Base article 233264.
I would do so only as a last resort, because deleting a .dbx file cited in that article can cause problems.

- Collapse -
Here's what I did
May 31, 2005 2:17AM PDT

I started to save, but realized my 'inbox' and 'sent items' folder were very full, and I was finding I could not delete them, or anything in them.

I was getting multiple msgs, AND the 'DIRECTDB.DLL' error.

So, I saved some stuff I wanted from my inbox, and went into the C drive>Windows>Application Data>OE>Identities> and found MY identity and deleted the inbox & sent items' .dbx files.

Then I compacted my folders and voila--I have Email again! :-D

- Collapse -
(NT) (NT) Glad it worked out.
May 31, 2005 9:52AM PDT
- Collapse -
(NT) (NT)
Jun 7, 2005 9:56PM PDT
- Collapse -
How did you fix?
Jun 16, 2005 5:19AM PDT

I am having the same issue with my outlook Express. How did you get it fixed?

- Collapse -
How did you fix?
Jun 16, 2005 5:20AM PDT

I am having the same issue with my outlook Express. How did you get it fixed?
My email is( sales@mascotsandcostumes.com )

- Collapse -
I ran a sys restore from the disk!
Jun 27, 2005 6:27AM PDT

And even after I did that, I was still coming up with a nasty Trojan that I finally got to just circulate around in my computer. It was a sys file, so not easilly deleted. I tried to make a dummy folder for it, and then my son got the bright idea to go into safe mode and delete that folder (ever have 'area.exe' on your computer? UGH!) and THEN create the dummy folder--since then no probs with area!

But honestly I don't know what I did to stop the OE 'msmin' message from appearing--it comes up from time to time but not as mucn now.....I think its just because I'm running MS's ******* stepchild of an OS, Windows Me!!!!! Silly

Good luck and sorry it took so long for me to reply!

- Collapse -
One or several DBX files were corrupted.
Jul 10, 2005 7:33PM PDT

I also came across this problem once. It turned out that this message appeared if one or several DBX files were corrupted. Outlook Express stores messages in these files, each folders corresponds to one file.
If there are no important messages in the folder, you can just delete the corresponding DBX file. Next time OE is started, it will create the deleted file again (of course, it will be empty).
If there are messages important to you in this folder, you should use a special program. I used Repair Tool for Outlook Express and it recovered all my messages (more than 4000), the only thing was that there were some duplicates.