[quote user="idw"]Martin, since each instance of Pegasus Mail rewrites Pegasus Mail's Registry keys (among others containing its path information) any application using these entries would automatically communicate to the last instance of Pegasus Mail started, no matter whether it's still running or not. So that this didn't work for Brian is most probably some timing issue, I suppose.[/quote]

Interesting thought.  Both days I have been running a disk wiping program to clean a couple of external drives.  It is hard to imagine this had anything to do with it but it is the only thing that comes to mind that was occurring during the odd behavior.  It's as good an explanation as any,

Until yesterday I could count on the last instance of Pegasus Mail started (when running multiple instances) was the one invoked by the Sendto context menu or by Mailto links.  Obviously that has changed.  I haven't done extensive testing yet but I use a batch file to start the instance so know that I have not changed the startup order.  AFAIK, there is a registry entry that contains the last instance started which I assumed is what Sendto and Mailto look at.  Does anyone know whether this is indeed the case?  If so, at what point during the Pegasus Mail startup is that registry entry written?

I plan to do some testing when I have time but would love to have some ideas about what might be affecting this behavior.

TIA!

Brian,

   I can find no entry under Pegasus Mail in the registry on my machine that identifies which instance is either first or last. I also checked the Mailto andSendto classes, and the start commands do not show any identity info.

I suspect that this kind of info is most likely to be found in pmail.ini or one of the other state maintaining files.

Martin

I have been running two or three instances for years and did a good bit of testing early on to determine that the last started instance was the one that gets invoked.  That behavior changed yesterday and today even though all instance were started each morning.  Shortly after I posted I shut down all instances and then started them like I do every morning and the behavior was back to invoking the last instance started.

The info about the last run instance is stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Pegasus Mail but when the wrong instance was being invoked it was not the instance stored in this key.  That is the piece of the puzzle I am trying to figure out.  I also wonder if a delay in the startup of one of the instances might have caused the problem although I have a long enough pauses built into my batch file that this should not be an issue.  This really is not a big deal, more of a curiosity thing about how the instance invoked is determined.

Just for clarity, I manually start an instance from a USB stick.  Once that is loaded and has checked for new messages I run the batch file which starts two instances from an installation on an office server. One is my personal mailbox, the other is the office catchall mailbox.  There is a delay of a number of seconds (don't remember how many) built into the batch file to allow the my personal mailbox instance to fully load before the catchall instance starts.  I work mostly in the catchall instance so that is the one that I need to be invoked by mailto and sendto.  The registry entries associated with wsendto point to the server but they don't appear relevant.  With two instances running from that shared install there is an elusive something else that determines which running instance gets invoked.  This is reinforced by the fact that when I start the USB instance last it is normally the one that gets invoked.

Again, no big deal.  Just curious.

Brian

 I just checked my registry again, and no sign of instance tracking using the key and sub-keys of Pegasus Mail. As for WSendto and Mailto, they both still use DDE, which is almost dead, I have switched away from using them. They both try to connect with Pegasus Mail, using the Windows API call., FindWindow with a Windows class of "frame" and a caption of "Pegasus Mail" . The order of startup suggests that there is a Windows lookup using "Z" order to find the latest (most recent) instance.

Martin

[quote user="irelam"]I suspect that this kind of info is most likely to be found in pmail.ini or one of the other state maintaining files.[/quote]

Martin, since each instance of Pegasus Mail rewrites Pegasus Mail's Registry keys (among others containing its path information) any application using these entries would automatically communicate to the last instance of Pegasus Mail started, no matter whether it's still running or not. So that this didn't work for Brian is most probably some timing issue, I suppose.

Agreed.  If only we knew where it lives and how it is maintained.  Answers to those might provide a clue into why the behavior changed after being so consistent for so long.  For now I'm going with it bit being an anomoly without an explanation.  See how easy that was to let it go?  Not!  It will haunt me for weeks.