hope you can help.

I got windows 8.1 and windows live mail.

what I've always done is to get my emails transferred from the main bband server, into windows live mail where I store them in certain folders I create - for example a folder called friends, and a second folder called bills, etc etc.

about 3 wks ago my pc went corrupt because unbeknown to me my free downloaded anti virus conflicted with the built in 8.1 one.

I then saved x things on the external hard drive, then reset the whole pc from factory settings all over again, and didn't reinstall the free downloaded anti virus.

Then put saved things back on the pc from the ext hard drive including emails I'd saved from windows live mail.

What then happened was all new emails then received, the body text changed into the body text of a previous email. Weird.

So I then painfully had to create new named folders and put newly received emails in these, then get rid of the previous folders where the body text kept changing.

All bar one folder, because I thought everything would be ok.

But now, whats happened is one of these folders in windows live mail which contained about 30 emails dated from 2013 to date, have all completely disappeared.  That folder isn't listed anymore in the storage folders section.

I've searched the pc, I've clicked on all black triangles and other symbols in every folder in every part of windows live mail but all gone.

The pc's main search found older emails that I remember not wanting to keep, but the pc's search did not find the 2013-2015 emails from that specific folder at all.

very upset, these emails are so important and now they seem to have gone forever.

what is going on, why did this happen?

where is the folder with all the emails?

why did it disappear like that?

how can I get them back?

most importantly, how can I stop windows live mail making my folders containing emails from disappearing again?

thanks for any advice you can give, I did try phoning windows, the shop, the bband server people, but all led me to this chat community place.

cheers