As part of tuning a PC, I did a defragment, only to find that one file  would not defrag.

The file was inbox.dbx… that means its the inbox file for outlook express.

inbox.dbx was about 1GB in size, and it had about 1000 fragments.

Now that will slow outlook express!

So how do I fix this if the defrag tool won’t work.

I could try the contig tool from sysinternals, but given the time I had available, I found the quickest way to achieve a similar result was:

• Make sure outlook express is shut down (you might need to restart your PC to be sure)
• open windows explorer (make sure you can see all hidden files (tools -> folder options -> view -> “show hidden files and folders” , “hide protected OS files”, “display the contents of system folders”)
• navigate to: c:documents and settings{user}local settingsapplication dataidentities{long hex number}microsoftoutlook express
• right click on inbox.dbx -> copy -> right click on the “outook express” folder ->paste. This will create a copy of inbox.dbx (called: Copy of inbox.dbx)… this part can take many minutes.
• delete (or, to be safe: rename) inbox.dbx
• rename “copy of inbox.dbx” to “inbox.dbx”

You will find that the “new copy” of inbox.dbx is much less fragmented than the old one.

Once you are sure everything is working correctly, you can actually delete the “renamed” inbox.dbx.