Outlook Express Inbox Problems

I’ve had a problem with Outlook Express for 2 days.  I couldn’t get any new mail to appear.  It would get the message count from the server and then error out.  I looked on the Bell site for potential solutions, server alerts or config. changes.  I guess I spent a lot of time so a tech chat session popped up.  I said OK and the tech played around and re-checked everything I did.  In fact by the time he left, I had another error popping up on all my old messages.  He said he didn’t know and to clear out my inbox.  Well I tried clearing it but I noticed some messages wouldn’t move but ended up duplicating.  So I ran the folder compacting utility and that fixed it.