Thanks to all. I solved my problem essentially along the lines that you recommended. I can confirm that a normal installation in Vista is not the way to go. See my other post.
I learned (painfully) about the Windows registry many years ago when I tried to migrate from 3.1 to 95 (I think it was). From then on, I assumed every Windows program had to be "installed" before it would run in Windows. But the advice "Moving Your Mailbox to Another PC" said just to copy the whole shebang to "any" subdirectory and click on the PMAIL executable. So, my questions are (1) whether this procedure will work under Windows Vista and (2) whether PMAIL actually "installs" itself using the registry. I'm assuming that the error messages I'm getting from folder changes (see my other post from today) would go away if I ran PMAIL from a data directory, "under the radar" so to speak.
Doug Hepler
While you can muscle your way into running pmail under the radar as you suggested, my experience is that thae best way is to install the program on every new computer you migrate to. I suggest the following easy steps that I used on windows 98,2k,xp and vista quite successfully. Please don't copy any pmail files to the new PC before you do this.
1. Copy your subdirectory "Mail" under pmail from the old computer, with all its structure and sub directories onto suitable removable media (CD, USB drive, etc).
2. Run the pmail zip file, i.e., the whole software file that you download from the site, e.g. w32-441.exe on the new computer. This will install pmail on the new PC. You will have the option to direct to any folder you select onthe new PC.
3. Copy the "Mail" subdirectory that you retrieved from the old PC into the new pmail folder on the new PC. This will transfer all your mail box(es) to the new PC with the old setings. Make sure it replaces any "Mail" sub folder that mighte have been created during the installation on the new PC.
4. Run pmail the same way as you did on the old PC and if necessary, fine tune your user settings, internet options and so on.
Good luck!
Since many people have real problems with this (one has reported this did not work today), I find copying everything from the old computer to the new works a whole lot better. All you need to do then is create a shortcut to the program and it runs. If you want to upgrade after the move then install the upgrade over the old setup.
