I have an XP Home/NTFS system with MSN 7.0 as its email client. I've found that mail is stored in the user's Local Settings path, in \MSN\db, \MSN\db1, and \MSN\db30 folders, as what essentially are EML files. The different db folders might have resulted from upgrades to newer versions. The db folders each contain a subfolder named for each (two) account, e.g., Mail (joe@msn.com), under which individual messages are stored as text (eml) files, with names that include a hex string, like stm0x30014c.000. I understand that Windows Mail now stores messages as eml files, but this configuration is different. I should add that the db folders, themselves, also contain mail files, but in a naming convention of joe-msn.com.xxx, where xxx seems to be a three character hex string, e.g., joe-msn.com.cc0.
First, I'd be interested in a paper or resource on MSN mail. Secondly, I'm looking for a way to read mail offline in my virtual machine of the target system, but it seems that MSN wants to connect. Is there a way to open MSN and review the stored mail offline? Thanks!