Fun with Outlook Express: 2Gb Message Folders (File) Size Limitation

I had a problem sending emails last night. I had to get one sent that was kind of important. I use Outlook Express because, well, I’ve always used Outlook Express. It’s simple to use and does One Thing Good (a Unix ideal: Make programs small and do One Thing Good, and allow them to “connect” with other programs in case you want to do More Things Good.) that is send and receive Emails. Anyway the problem resulted in emails getting an ERROR, a Blank Error to make things more confusing, upon sending messages. The message would get stuck in the Outbox. Recipients would tell me that they not only “got the message” but “got 20 copies of it”. So the email messages were getting sent, but OE was not registering that fact correctly. So off I went to find the un-technology or aged-old-technology that causes this phenomena. Here is the transcript of an email that I wrote to a friend and customer about my trouble-with-tribbles troubles with Microsoft Outlook Express:

> Hi Alan!  No Trouble Here!! John

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Anyway I guess it’s a good time to “clean house” a bit - I had sent emails going back to the year 2005.

I’ve heard of that issue in PST mailbox files for Outlook, but not Outlook Express. But I’m sure it’s the same type of thing. And I’ve probably had this problem before … although it might be that Windows XP itself or a hard drive suffers a glitch or crash before OE gets to that point. I say that because I remember backing up OE files (and thus email) in the past … and re-importing them into a fresh Windows XP install.

Anyway, reference: http://help.wugnet.com/windows2/Blank-Error-Message-Emails-ftopict493707.html

There used to be hard drive size limitations, and no doubt file size limits in 16 bit FAT/FAT32 and NTFS as well. But I know these days I have much larger FILES such as DVD movies on NTFS in 4, 8, 54 (Blue Ray?) Gb Sizes without any problems.

See also: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/903095

I guess it’s a matter of “bandwidth” somewhere. Extra Class Ham Operators get more Bandwidth on HF. Newer compression technologies and communications transmission methods give more bandwidth for Television and Internet bandwidth situations. 64-bit IP Addressing Methods (e.g. IPv6 vs IPv4) give more bandwidth in IP Address “Space” and in Computer Operating Systems (e.g. 32-bit Windows vs 64-bit Windows.) In fact I’m running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on a computer with 6 Gb or RAM memory and it can actually use it all. In a 32-bit Operating System it can not. 64-bit Operating Systems are starting to take over. It’s at the “Tipping Point” where you won’t be able to buy a new computer with a 32-bit OS, it will come out-of-the-box with a 64-bit OS.

—
Alan Spicer

Alan Spicer Telecom / Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications (at) marinetelecom.net

This entry was posted on 27. December 2009 at 22:10 and is filed under General Computer onboard Sail and Motor Yachts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.