To free up disk space, Outlook Express can compact messages. This may take up to a few minutes.

Anonymous
2010-01-04T16:48:32+00:00

Every few minutes the message :

"To free up disk space, Outlook Express can compact messages.  This may take up to a few minutes."

This is irrelevant for two reasons :

(1) I do not use Outlook Express, and therefore have no messages to compact.

(2) I do not need to free up disk space as I am currently using only five per cent of a very large disk.

Could someone please tell me how I get rid off this very irritating message.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Internet and connectivity

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Anonymous
2012-06-10T21:36:30+00:00

Here are the things I did that resolved the issue for me:

I reset Compact Check Count to 0, and I uninstalled Windows Search 4.0. 

As for Outlook Express: I don't use it.

Thank you for the reply...and thanks for the advice & info.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-performance/outlook-express-can-compact-messages-how-do-i-turn/b7e41d7f-d0db-4930-9c64-19e3c7b7d5cf?tm=1339359499078&page=1#_self

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Anonymous
2010-01-17T22:00:57+00:00

Try resetting the compact count in the registry:

  1. Start the registry editor.
  2. Open this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities{identity}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0

where identity is a string of letters, numbers, and dashes. 3. Set the value of Compact Check Count to 0. 4. Close the registry editor.

For more information, see Why You Should Let Outlook Express Compact Messages When It Asks You .

Warning: Incorrectly editing the registry might damage your system and prevent Windows from starting. Before doing it, back up your important data, make a restore point, and make sure you know how to repair a damaged system.

Boulder Computer Maven

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-10-31T17:16:40+00:00

    Well please see this link and its contents:  www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#2.  There is an entire history of this issue of message store corruption in OE that dates back to 1997 when OE4 was around.  Message loss almost always was associated with compaction and when the MVPs at the time complained enough to Microsoft, it finally stopped the compaction from going on in the background and initiated the trigger of 100 closings of OE to prompt the user to manually compact.  Unfortunately it was a not-well-thought-out solution that they came up with as can be seen from the myriad problems alluded to in this thread.  Those of us who are still OE users are stuck now with what we have.  Compaction is necessary as otherwise the database, which also contains the messages, never cleans up and it gets larger and larger filling with wasted space until it gets so unmanageable it becomes corrupt and all the messages are lost in the file.  You can compact manually via File | Folder | Compact all at your convenience and it will then reset the counter to zero so it will wait until another 100 closings of OE until it prompts again.

    Just another note:  The reason others (even those who don't use OE) see this prompt is that the counter is incremented everytime the OE message store is accessed (such as what Windows Search likely does) and the access ends.  That means OE is never opened, but only the message store is.  So if any program accesses the message store without opening OE, it still will result in incrementing the counter, and when the programs access the message store enough times (100) to set off the trigger, then it will prompt the user to compact the OE message store, even if they have never used OE.  So anyone with this problem needs to find the programs that are accessing the OE store and then they can adjust those programs (such as in Windows Search, excluding OE).

    Maybe the next person searching this issue will have a clearer resolution now.

    cheers,

    steve

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-10-31T15:22:20+00:00

    Sorry I bothered you Steve... but I NEVER had this problem until recently with Windows XP on my old P.C. I did research which brought me to this forum.  22 months ago it may have been posted but only impacts my system now... I won't go further. I will continue to research it via another means. I HAVE read the entire post and tried various recommendations; none of which has corrected the problem. I finally let the dumb pop up run and compact the messages when the pop-up showed up; as per the suggestion of one kind poster.  Maybe I won't see it for a while. No reply is necessary...

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-10-31T13:34:59+00:00

    Why are you replying to a message that is 22 months old?  I'd suggest you read the entire conversation and then if you have issues, start a new question.  This issue has been thoroughly dissected and discussed here and in other threads.

    steve

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