SALEM — Evelyn Cappos wasn't supposed to be behind the wheel yesterday morning. In fact, she wasn't supposed to be driving at all until 2015.

That's what a Salem District Court judge told the 74-year-old Manchester woman last August when he sentenced her after her third drunken-driving conviction.

Problem is, no one told the Registry of Motor Vehicles — or, if they did, the Registry took no action. In fact, just last month, the Registry printed up a brand-new license for Cappos.

As it turns out, her case is one of what the state auditor last summer estimated as thousands of drivers whose licenses were never yanked by the Registry despite court orders following drunken driving and other motor vehicle convictions.

No one is really certain of the number because so many cases are missing from the Registry database, a spokeswoman for the agency acknowledged yesterday.

Last month, court clerk magistrates around the state got a memo with the subject line "High Priority — Public Safety" and a request from the Trial Court for data on thousands of drunken-driving cases between 2003 and 2007.

"We don't know the number," admitted Registry spokeswoman Ann Dufresne. "That's what we're trying to find out."

At Salem District Court, clerks were asked to go through more than 140 cases from that time period, to determine whether notices were sent by the court to the Registry.

The Salem court has found that in most of the case files in question, there was evidence that the notices were sent to the state, including fax transmission receipts. In the other 25 percent, it was not clear whether those notices were sent from the court.

Cappos, a house cleaner, was arrested on Route 128 in Danvers, where police found her driving 30 miles an hour in September 2005.

She told the state trooper she was heading home after a girls' night out.

In August 2007, she pleaded guilty and was ordered to serve 150 days in jail. The judge also suspended her driver's license for eight years.

Last month, Cappos went to the Registry to apply for a Massachusetts identification card, a photo ID. Then she got a call telling her to come by and pick up her new license, her lawyer, Chris Beares, said yesterday.

State law prohibits someone from having both a state photo ID and a driver's license. It appears that when the Registry employee processed her application for a photo ID, the employee saw that her license was still valid and issued her a new one.

Cappos, her lawyer said, assumed that meant she could start driving again.

But on Nov. 18, more than a year after her sentencing and in response to the memo, Salem District Court sent the Registry a notice of her conviction. On Nov. 24, the Registry suspended her license for eight years, Dufresne said, noting that Cappos should have gotten a letter from the Registry informing her of the suspension.

It's not clear from the case file whether a notification was originally sent in August 2007.

Yesterday, shortly before 9 a.m., Manchester police arrested Cappos for driving after license suspension for drunken driving, an offense that carries a minimum mandatory 60 days in jail. Judge Richard Mori released her on personal recognizance.

The situation has penalized otherwise law-abiding drivers, as well. Some drivers who plead guilty to traffic offenses or to drunken driving have complied with the judge's order, then had their license reinstated, only to get a letter from the Registry telling them that their suspension was now going to go into effect, said lawyers who have handled drunken-driving cases.

In a report issued in July, state auditor Joe DeNucci estimated that in 2005 and 2006, between 7,500 and 9,000 drivers whose licenses were ordered suspended by a judge were allowed to keep their licenses for two to four years before their paperwork was processed.

Dufresne said part of the blame lies with the incompatible computer systems set up in the courts and the Registry. Rather than sending the information electronically, courts must send paper copies of the notices to the Registry, where an employee must enter the data manually into the computer system.