Question about Outlook Express

I have looked through the many entries on solving the issues with rebuilding the Outlook Database

Do not know what caused the "crash" - Outlook worked fine yesterday - but suddenly a rebuild was required and all went sour from there

- Have tried restore old versions from TimeMachine (several old versions - weeks and months)
- Have tried to create new entity
- Tried copy in Finder etc

Everytime rebuild starts fine with scanning and control - then starts loading fine - almost at the end stops - tries to rebuild - and then abort with a message that the database could not rebuild - same result every time - independant of approach

My db is about 1.8 Gb and I have 60Gb free space on my Mac

Mail system is stand alone (not exchange)

Getting pretty concerned (and tired) after hours of trials without progress

Lucky that I  an receieve new mails through my iPhone - but getting stessed of not having access to full Outlook


Any fresh ideas and help is highly appreciated !!