Outlook express not staying as default.

For some reason my outlook express is not staying as my default mail handler, even thoiugh i go to options and make it default everytime I go into
O/E, which is many times per day..
I plan to re- install IE 6.0 to try to repair this.
Is this ok or will this be a bad fix? I hope I will not lose all my email if I re-install IE 6.0

Any suggestions / help appreciated.