Is there a problem between Keychain and Mail?

Question

I recently added 2 more POP accounts to my Mail 2.2 program, and an additional POP account to my wife's Mail. My accounts all work fine, but my wife's account kept asking her for a password, which became quite annoying.
I searched Apple's online help and found what seemed to be the problem on a page titled "Mail 2.0 Help: My Password is not saved" (at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mail/2.0/en/ml1047.html ) I followed the instructions, verified and repaired the Keychain completely and when the problem persisted, I deleted the accounts, as suggested. The instructions said that messages wouldn't be lost, but all the sent mail is now gone, and only the past 3 weeks of emails from the inbox were recovered from the server.
Needless to say, my wife is very mad at me for losing many years worth of her emails, and the initial problem of unsaved Mail passwords still persists. When I checked Keychain again, all of her passwords have been deleted, and she is mad about this as well.
Doesn't Apple have a moral and ethical responsibility to publish factual assistance that doesn't make the problem worse?
Does anyone know if there are any tricks in Keychain to save passwords in Mail 2.1, or is there some sort of glitch in the program?
If I were to buy one data recovery utility on my limited budget (Disk Warrior, TechTool Pro, DataRescue 2, or FileSalvage) which one would most likely resurrect her old emails, and be most beneficial for routine maintenance in the future?

Answer 1

Thank you for your insight and suggestion to use Filesalvage for data recovery. I downloaded and registered the software and recovered over 1600 emails files stored on a 5G iPod in disk mode via USB. Unfortunately, the files are saved in *.emix but Mail 2.1 will not import *.emix, it will only recognize .mbox The FileSalvage developer suggested using a free program Apple used to provide for downloading at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unixopensource/emlxtomboxconverter.html but unfortunately Apple seems to have stopped distributing the program.
I did find another program named emix to mbox Converter which changes the file type to .mbox, and the files can then be imported into Mail 2.1 using it's import function (File> Import Mailboxes) The mailbox(es) should be imported as "other" files " (not as Mail for Mac). It took me quite a while to research andf sort it all out, but I think I have recovered almost if not all the emails. One downside is that ALL deleted emails, including deleted spam were imported so it took a while to sort through 1600 emails to get the 700 or so I wanted, but overall the software, and time spent was worth it. Of course, it would have been much better if Apple didn't recommend false solutions....
I still haven't figured out why Keychain won't save Mail passwords, but I may try talking to someone at Apple, and I will make sure to back up all files before trying anything they recommend. I have run Keychain First Aid (deleted all the passwords), Disk Utility, AppleJack, and Onyx without detecting any apparent problems, but Keychain still won't save passwords.
Thanks again for your assistance, David.