Thanks Brian.

I am very pleased to say that I now have my data back, at least for my user, "kenneth" in the I:\PMAIL directory.

I copied the contents (files only) from the backup of two nights ago, and then the contents of the "kenneth" directory, and Pegasus started normally. So it must have been some sort of corruption of the file contents of I:\PMAIL and/or I:\PMAIL\kenneth. And it seems that Pegasus behaves better if a backup is not copied to a new directory, but rather into a directory in an identical location to the original, after renaming the original. This relates to your earlier comment.

Now I have carefully to examine the most recent version of the "kenneth" directory mail message and folder files collected today and hopefully restore them by copying them into the now usable "kenneth" directory.

I shall use your helpful comments in your recent post to help me to do that.

So thanks for your help.

Kenneth Spencer

Good afternoon.

I have encountered a problem today by which Pegasus Mail (4.71) seems to have failed.

When I started Pegasus Mail, first I noted a "Welcome  to Pegasus Mail v 4.71" screen, which I would never expect to see as I am already using that version. There was also a comment about Pegasus Mail having suffered an abnormal shutdown, although I didn't notice that such had occurred.

Then, after a little delay, the layout appeared, but instead of my usual layout, the Folder List in its own panel, and my New Mail Folder open, it opened with a single panel containing the folders, and a Preview Pane, a layout which I never use.

Then I noted that there were no Users available in the User Dropdown List - not even the user name which I use to startup was present.

There is also no Internet Settings - no POP settings and no SMTP settings, so I cannot download any emails.

The folders & emails seemed to be present. 

SO: advice please - what is the best way of safely  recovering from this mishap? My mail data is stored on a LAN server and have a full backup of Pegasus Mail data from 2:00am this morning, excluding of course all today's emails, which are present on the server. PMAIL.USR in the pmail data directory seems to be unchanged, as is HIERARCH.PM.

As I am reluctant to change anything without support advice, an early reply would be helpful!

Thanks in advance

Kenneth Spencer

Just a little bit more information, in case it helps:

Mailbox location shows <DEFAULT>. It should be I:\PMAIL, but I don't want to change in case DEFAULT is actually referring to the correct location, especially since the messages and folders are there. 

Thanks

Kenneth Spencer

I am responding under the assumption that Pegasus Mail is installed on your PC (not a network install) so the behavior you describe would mostly be what would happen if I: was not available when Pegasus Mail started up.  The odd part is that you can see folders and messages.  Pmail may be looking in an old location.  Go to Help > About Pegasus Mail and click the Info button.  The paths shown for the Home and the New mailbox locations is were Pegasus Mail is looking.  Let us know what they are.

Further update ...

Following my last message, I decided to attempt to reconnect Pegasus to the LAN folder, and so changed the mailbox location from <DEFAULT> to I:\PMAIL which is the correct data location. However, now all folders except the standard Pegasus folders have now disappeared. I have attempted to restore HIERARCH.PM from my backup but that makes no difference.

 This is looking too much like a catastrophe - has anyone any ideas please?

Thanks

Kenneth Spencer

Thanks for the reply Brian ... received just after I posted my last addendum.

Help -> About  Pegasus Mail -> Info reveals the following:

WINPMAIL.EXE directory: C:\PMAIL\Programs
Home mailbox location: I:\PMAIL
New mailbox location: I:\PMAIL\kenneth

which seems to be correct if "New mailbox location" refers to my user mail directory. But after I changed the location to I:\PMAIL the folders disappeared, so I have only new mail showing. And all Settings are missing. I have copied last night's backup of HIERARCH.PM but that seems to make no difference.

In hope

Kenneth Spencer

I suspect both the HEIRARCH.PM and the PMAIL.INI files are hosed.  I also suspect that the  the backup was done after the damage occurred.  If you have a backup from two nights ago try restoring both the HEIRARCH.PM and the PMAIL.INI files (suggest renaming the old ones until certain you don't need them).

Thanks again, Brian.

At the moment I am restoring last nights backup (entire - which is quite a few gigabyte) to a new location, and I will then link Pegasus to that. If that fails, I will then try from a day earlier as you suggest. 

If one or other of these options give me my folder hierarchy back I presume I can identify new messages in the directory holding current data by their date? Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me the file extensions of messages or any other filesof today's date that I may need to copy over?

Incidentally, the contents of HIERARCH.PM and PMAIL.INI are both intelligible, and don't appear damaged to the human eye. 

I'll report back after the restore is complete ...

Thanks

Ken

The fact that the contents of HIERARCH.PM and PMAIL.INI are readable isn't surprising.  I don't know what happens behind the scenes that damages them but I've rebuilt ones that looked fine but a restore or rebuild fixed a problem.  If you don't have many identities, manually reconfiguring Pegasus Mail is the way to go because it creates a clean PMAIL.INI (no entries left from previous versions).

I was surprised to see that your home and new mailbox paths were different.  This is something to be aware of if they shouldn't be different.

Be sure to use PCONFIG32.EXE to specify the path to the restored mailboxes.

As for new messages, they exist as files with a .CNM extension.  You can recover those based on name and date. You won't be able to recover any that had been moved into folder without restoring the folder files (.PMM/.PMI file pair).  You can base the restore decision on the time stamp of these as well.  Be sure to replace the files though.  Don't rename and then copy.  They contain internal folder id's that cause problems when duplicated so you don't want two of the same even if the filename is different.

If you don't know about Hans' Guide to Filenames and Extensions, it's a valuable resource.  Find it at http://www.vandenbogaerde.net then follow the Pegasus Mail information link to the Filenames and extension link.

Thanks, Brian.

I used pconfig.exe to change the data directory to C:\Users\kass\pmail which is the location where I have copied to backup to. Strangely, Pegasus reports that the user (kenneth) does not exist on the system. Checking back in pconfig.exe, the new location has registerered.

Do I have to change the data directory in Pegasus itself before changing it in pconfig.exe? If not I cannot see why I am getting that message.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Pegasus now shows no message history at all, and reports Single User Mode. I really cannot see what is happening here. Would it be worth while deleting the Pegasus program completely, and reinstalling? Presumably doing that leaves the data directories intact?

Thanks

Ken

Unfortunately there are paths coded into numerous configuration files which cause problems when you copy or restoring the entire contents of a mailbox directory to a different location and then try to point Pegasus Mail to it.  I apologize for not calling this to your attention early on.

Are the different paths to home and new mailbox directories expected are should everything be in I:\PMAIL\KENNETH?

I:\PMAIL is the "root" directory for Pegasus Mail data.

"kenneth" is a sub-directory of that, in common with a number of other sub-directories of I:\PMAIL for other users.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: I have just tried connecting on my laptop: it reports the same error as the initial time the problem appeared on this PC. So it confirms that something is wrong with the data in the data directory rather than with Pegasus it's configuration.

Thanks

Ken

[quote user="kaspencer"]I:\PMAIL is the "root" directory for Pegasus Mail data.

"kenneth" is a sub-directory of that, in common with a number of other sub-directories of I:\PMAIL for other users.[/quote]

This indicates to me that I:PMAIL should not be the new mail directory but only you know that for sure.

[quote user="kaspencer"]ADDITIONAL NOTE: I have just tried connecting on my laptop: it reports the same error as the initial time the problem appeared on this PC. So it confirms that something is wrong with the data in the data directory rather than with Pegasus it's configuration. [/quote]

Understand that the data AND the configuration files for each Pegasus Mail user resides in the associated mailbox directory.  This makes Pegasus Mail a challenge when trying to resolve problems such as yours.

If user "kenneth" the only user with this problem (Pegasus Mail starts up fine as the other users) then, with Pegasus Mail closed as user kenneth, rename I:\PMAIL\KENNETH to something like I:\PMAIL\KENNETH_BAD then restore I:\PMAIL\KENNETH from a backup that you are certain was made prior to the problem. 

Run pconfig32.exe and make sure the configuration directory points

to where winpm32.exe resides (default is C:\PMAIL\PROGRAMS) and the

Home mailbox root directory points to I:\PMAIL\~N.

Pegasus Mail should now start up normally and can start the process of copying in any new messages from KENNETH_BAD and possibly I:\PMAIL.  Maintain KENNETH_BAD until you are comfortable that you have recovered any needed data.

Note: under a normal multi-user install the root mailbox directory (I:\PMAIL in your case) should contain one PMAIL.USR file and one subdirectory for each Pegasus Mail user.

Also, don't mess with the laptop.  It may be of value should anything need to be copied from it.