Wondering if anyone here with Windows ME experience might be able to explain this ...

MS Outlook Express will not display email message bodies -- just the headers -- and if we do CTRL+F2 to show the messages in Notepad, all we see is the markup for an empty HTML page.

However, if we do Properties > Details > Message Source, we can see that the messages are not empty. They all have normal contents, and none are infected with virii. Plain text, HTML, rich text, with or without attachments -- it's the same for all emails.

We can save individual emails as files with type .eml (associated in the registry as Outlook Express files), but OE opens these files in the same way -- won't show the message body.

Norton anti-virus is installed, but both auto-protect and email protection are off.

Doe this sound familiar to anyone? It's not my machine and I know nothing about Windows ME. I've reached the limit of my Windows knowledge. Can anyone point me in a suitable direction?

I'm grateful already ...

Is it doing this on *all* emails regardless of who they are from?

Yes. All of them. New emails and old emails that have been in folders for months. Makes no difference who from or when or what is in them.

What software have you installed recently? What system changes have you made?
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Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

Good questions ... it's not my machine, so I can't be certain.

As far as I know the only recent changes have been to update Norton Antivirus 2000 (renew a lapsed subscription). The owner is a naive user -- she would not have made any system changes.

It's not a registry thing -- scanregw reports no problems.

A second wierdness has just emerged this evening -- she can't save anything in MS Word! That's something I have never heard of before ... whatever method she uses to save a document, MS Word does nothing at all -- no errors, no messages, just no response at all.

Should we consider re-installing the operating system?

It's most likely her NAV 2000 update that is causing the problem. I'd recommend that she turn off NAV 2000 email checking and see if she can properly receive emails.

With regards to the Word problem, it most likely has something to do with the recent update that she did with NAV 2000 if that's the only thing she has changed in her system.
========================================
Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

Follow-up ... in case anyone else here gets the same problem.

The suggestions to look carefully at Norton AV were good, as we have learnt that Norton AV 2000 can cause similar problems in some circumstances.

However, the eventual solution is as strange as the effect ...

MS Word problem: find and delete normal.dot

Outlook Express problem: delete everything from "\Windows\Temporary Internet Files" and "\Windows\Temp" (that one had more than 33,000 files in it).

We still don't know the causes, but we are left with the feeling that some of these MS products are not quite as good as they are portrayed.

What version of Office is she using? If it's 2000 version, I'd highly suggest upgrading it to SP3 after installing the SP1a. I've noticed some problems with Office, like with Excel and Word, so I worked on upgrading it to SP3 two nights ago...

If she is using MS Office 2000 and has not applied any SP to it, she should at least upgrade to SP1a.
========================================
Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me