Outlook Express downloading extremely high volume of emails

[inept]

I opened my Outlook Express and it began to download emails. I thought it was excessive at about 54 emails, so I stopped the downloads. Everytime I open OE it continues the downloads from the last downloaded. It is now at 462 (45.6MB) new, 536 (51.4MB) Total.

I am using:
XP version 2002 with sp3
IE 6.0.2900.5512 xp_sp3
Outlook Express 6.00.290.5512

The other weird/scary thing is that there are no new emails in my in-box.

I have run Ad-aware and spybot search and destroy.

My anti-virus (AVG) has not picked up anything.

Do I need to be concerned or is there a simple explanation.

Thanks to all those experienced folks out there who take the time to share their knowledge.

[EzyStvy]

I would let it finish downloading....If it happens again - look in the account settings - Advanced tab and unechk the box "leave mail on server."

[Statica]

What mail server are you connecting to? POP or IMAP/Exchange? It sounds like you're syncing mails from other folders as well (do you have mails in other folders?) Do you use this mailbox from other computers?

Do you have any unusually large attachments in your mails? Have you checked your sent-mail folder to see how many mails you have?

An easy way to verify your actual mailbox size and number of mails without going through the hassle of downloading everything to OE, would be to use a web based mail client that your provided has.

[inept]

EzyStvy, Are you saying that all the old emails that were left on the server are being re-downloaded? If so, I do not see them in my inbox. My inbox has 221 emails. The total of all my folders = 261 and something has tried to download over 500.

Statica, The server I connect to is a POP3. I am unaware of any web based mail client for Verizon. I only use this computer for this server email.

I logged onto my server's web site and accessed my emails. There are a ton of old ones still there. I wilempty them and uncheck the "leave mail on server" to see if that corrects things. Gotta go for now.
Thank you, both.

[inept]

Thanks for all the help. I went to the server web site and deleted all the emails stored there. Now I have all the old emails on my computer again. The server was downloading all of my emails. I do not know why. Anyway, I get to delete the old ones again.

As I said, it is really great that so many experienced people help those in need.