Archive and Install Mail Problem...could somebody please advise?

Hello,
I went to the "genius bar" today because my powerbook fan has been blazing like crazy. I had OS 10.4 on my computer, which I had installed from an upgrade about a year ago. I bought the computer a few months before and when it shipped with 10.3. So the guy at the mac store told me to re-install the system using the archive and install feature. He told me to re-install 10.3, which came with the computer, and then to run the upgrade that I have to get it back to 10.4.
I am having some problems. I have reinstalled X.3 and find that when I open the Mail application, all of my messages of the last year are gone. I can't find them anywhere. The most recent message is from May '05, when I upgraded from 10.3 to 10.4. I am afraid that if I do anything else, like install 10.4 that I will lose any chance of recovering these files. Does anybody have any advice on where I can recover the emails from my inbox and other folders? I will be very angry if they are gone for good, because the guy at the apple store assured me that everything would be saved by clicking the "preserve users and network settings" option in the re-install program. Furthermore, lots of older emails (pre-'05) have been saved, so it seems like the newer ones should be too. Or will they only show up when I re-install 10.4? I was holding off on doing this because I wanted to see if the fan would run less using the older system.
thanks for any advice!
colin

cdingler:
When you Archive and Install all your info is saved in a Previous Systems Folder. You cannot boot from this folder, but you should find your data and prefs there. Check out this article: Archive and Install.
Try this: Go to the Previous Systems Folder and to the User's Library. When you open the Library Folder, go to Mail. All your stuff should be in there.
PS: Never do any major procedure such as installation, erase and install, archive and install without a good backup of everything you can't afford to lose.
Good luck.
cornelius

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Hello,
I went to talk to the folks at the "genius bar" today because my powerbook fan has been blazing like crazy. I had OS 10.4 on my computer, which I had installed from an upgrade about a year ago. I bought the computer a few months before that, when it still shipped with OS 10.3. So the guy at the mac store told me to re-install the system using the archive and install feature and the original install disks. He told me to re-install 10.3, which came with the computer, and then to run the upgrade that I have to get it back to 10.4.
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I am afraid that if I do anything else, like install 10.4 that I will lose any chance of recovering these files. Does anybody have any advice on where I can recover the emails from my inbox and other folders? The guy at the apple store assured me that everything would be saved by clicking the "preserve users and network settings" option in the re-install program.
Or will everything show up again when I re-install 10.4? I was holding off on doing this because I wanted to see if the fan would run less using the older system, as someone suggested that I try this. I also tried to "import" the inbox in the library/mail folder, but this only imported all of the messages that I already have...not the lost ones.
thanks for any advice!
colin

Did the folks or this person at the "genius bar" also recommend that you create or update your backup before performing an Archive & Install?
If not, a "genius" he ain't.
The mbox filing structure used with Tiger Mail is significantly different than the mbox filing structure used with previous Mail.app versions under Jaguar and Panther.
Tiger Mail stores each message contained in a mailbox as a separate file in .emix format located within the Messages folder for the mailbox. Although you can import Jaguar and Panther mailboxes to Tiger, the mbox format used with Tiger Mail is not backwards compatible or interchangeable with Jaguar or Panther Mail without taking an additional step first. The reason you are seeing the old messages available before and up until the time you upgraded to Tiger is because you didn't delete the left over content package files used by Panther Mail and one of these files contains all messages messages and message attachments which are not automatically deleted after the conversion process to the mbox format used with Tiger Mail is completed.
Using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail > this POP account named folder (named by the user name and incoming mail server for the account). Within the account named folder is there an INBOX.mbox file and/or an INBOX.mbox named folder and the same for the other mailboxes (mboxes) within the account named folder?
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Archive and Install Mail Problem...could somebody please advise?

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