Start a new thread with any specific questions to my comments as there are many folks who are way more knowledgeable than I about the inner workings that can corroborate, contest or clarify my comments. 

When I delete large files from a certain folder (or maybe more), then try to recover the lost spae, I get:

 "Pegasus Mail cannot reindex or recover deleted space from a folder that is currently open.

Please close the folder then try again. "

 What do i do about it? Obviously I have to be in the folder to do anything and I don't get this message with most folders.

Separately, guite often now, i also get a message saying to urgently close Pegasus and recover a file from backup 

[quote user="Tom Barkas"] What do i do about it?[/quote]

See here.

[quote user="idw"]

[quote user="Tom Barkas"] What do i do about it?[/quote]

See here.

[/quote]

No, that gives the sample effect - Quit instantly and restore 2 folders from a backup  - sorry, i should have said this before

[quote user="Tom Barkas"]No, that gives the sample effect - Quit instantly and restore 2 folders from a backup  - sorry, i should have said this before[/quote]

I have no idea what you're trying to say ...?

It's quite simple. I have a folder (or more than one) in Pegasus from which I've deleted files. But, when I try to recover deleted space (or even reindex it), Pegasus freaks out and says something like  "Quit Pegasus immediately once and restore the damaged files from a backup" - I don't really want to do it simply to give the exact message, as I then have to go through the restore process, but I can if you want. ("sample" in the previous message should have been "same").

The other problem, which was a new one, but now seems to have gone away, was that, when I tried to delete files from this folder yesterday, I kept getting the message "Can't delete files from an open folder"  - no idea what that meant, but it persisted through several exits from the  programme and restarts and rebooting the computer even

Two thoughts:

1.  The folders have hit the 2 GB size limit? 

Tom, if this might be the case, do you know how to identify the folder filenames and check the physical size of those .pmm files?

2.  Out of disk space?  Odd things happen during reindex attempts if there is inadequate disc space.  Small folders may reindex fine but larger ones may fail due to inadequate space.

[quote user="bfluet"]

Two thoughts:

1.  The folders have hit the 2 GB size limit? 

Tom, if this might be the case, do you know how to identify the folder filenames and check the physical size of those .pmm files?

2.  Out of disk space?  Odd things happen during reindex attempts if there is inadequate disc space.  Small folders may reindex fine but larger ones may fail due to inadequate space.

[/quote]

Thanks for the reply, Brian

1. If this limit is for an individual folder, then no - I'd guess the size was a few Mb - maybe 6 messages, all with attachments of  2 Mb or less. Just checked and the pmm file is about 1.5 Mb after deleting all but 2 of the files

2. On the drive where Pegasus Mail is stored, I have 489 Gb free 

That error you receive must be very rare since there has not been any acknowledgement of familiarity by anyone.  I certainly is unknown to me.  I would try creating a new folder and moving the messages to it from the problem folder.  If all is well, the problem folder can be deleted although it may be in a state where it won't delete from within PMail.  A manual removal of the associated .pmm/.pmi file pair would then be required.

[quote user="bfluet"]

That error you receive must be very rare since there has not been any acknowledgement of familiarity by anyone.  I certainly is unknown to me.  I would try creating a new folder and moving the messages to it from the problem folder.  If all is well, the problem folder can be deleted although it may be in a state where it won't delete from within PMail.  A manual removal of the associated .pmm/.pmi file pair would then be required.

[/quote]

Thanks, Brian,

I've made a new folder and copied over the 3 files I had left, then deleted the files from the old folder and tried to delete the old folder, but got the message: pegasus Mail cannot reindex or recover deleted space from a folder that is currently open

  so I deleted the pmm/pmi pair and lost the old folder. The good news is that the new folder shows no probelms - it can be reindexed or have space recovered.

 Glad to have come up with a previously unheard of problem - it's the same when I go to the GP  - all my illnesses are new to medical science

 Thanks to all who tried

Any chance that some flavour of AV software was involved in blocking file access?

[quote user="Tom Barkas"]I've made a new folder and copied over the 3 files I had left, then deleted the files from the old folder and tried to delete the old folder, but got the message: pegasus Mail cannot reindex or recover deleted space from a folder that is currently open

  so I deleted the pmm/pmi pair and lost the old folder. The good news is that the new folder shows no probelms - it can be reindexed or have space recovered.

 Glad to have come up with a previously unheard of problem - it's the same when I go to the GP  - all my illnesses are new to medical science[/quote]

Glad you have it fixed.  Sure would be nice to identify the cause of the problem.  

A number of years ago I had a tech tell me "you will drive yourself crazy if you try to figure out the cause of every computer problem".  He was basically saying to fix it and forget.  That is a philosophy I can't bring myself to live by but in some situations there seems no other choice.

[quote user="idw"]Any chance that some flavour of AV software was involved in blocking file access?
[/quote]

Hi Michael,

Not unless it was folder-specific. I'm using Windows Defender at the moment 

For you folk who understand these things:

 Recently, I've had several of these messages saying some an error had occurred and to quit Pegasus at once and reinstall the files for that folder from a backup (I can't remember what I was doing when I got this message - this happens when you get old).

 What I've done for each of these was to go to Acronis Nonstop Backup to find the previous version of two files (from maybe 15 min earlier) and simply copied then back into the original folder. Could this cause the other problem? 

As you know, Pegasus Mail needs sole access to its files while running which is why the strong recommendation exists to disable active AV scanning in the PMail executables directory and in the \MAIL directory.  I don't know how Acronis Nonstop Backup works but if it is trying to copy files while Pegasus is accessing them then corruption is a possibility.  The corruption could cause the error.  An unknown is whether the file restored from Acronis is a copy of the corrupted on.  It might be worth excluding the above mentioned locations if you can and see if the errors stop.

I don't understand how something called an "Nonstop Backup" can avoid backing up bad files.  I also don't know if you can identify the point in time that a file you are restoring was backed up .

[quote user="bfluet"]

As you know, Pegasus Mail needs sole access to its files while running which is why the strong recommendation exists to disable active AV scanning in the PMail executables directory and in the \MAIL directory.  I don't know how Acronis Nonstop Backup works but if it is trying to copy files while Pegasus is accessing them then corruption is a possibility.  The corruption could cause the error.  An unknown is whether the file restored from Acronis is a copy of the corrupted on.  It might be worth excluding the above mentioned locations if you can and see if the errors stop.

I don't understand how something called an "Nonstop Backup" can avoid backing up bad files.  I also don't know if you can identify the point in time that a file you are restoring was backed up .

[/quote]

I didn't know anything about PM needing sole access to its files while running (I've been using it for many many years!) . Does "running" mean when it's checking/sending mail or does it mean when the programme is running? - I have it running all the time, checking mail every 2 minutes. 

Could this happen in any folder not being accessed or only the new mail one? - does it access all the folders when it is running if there are no changes in these folders?

Till recently, I've used Avast antivirus to check ingoing and outgoing mail and didn't have problems, but have started to use Windows Defender because of problems with the combination of Avast and Win 8.1 and it's not easy to find out what exactly Windows Defender does. Are you saying not to check incoming and outgoing mail for viruses?  Nonstop Backup stores all changes from installation and tells you when the backup occurred with the date and time, so, when Pegasus suddenly freaks out and says Quit immediately and reinstate backup,  I pick a version from maybe about 15 min previously. I also backup changes to a hard drive and the Cloud - maybe this has an effect?.

The folder I've been talking about is called Answers. I have 100 folders and have just run Recover Deleted Space on all and the only ones to freak out with the Quit message were Main Folder and Main Folder 1  (1996 to 2013). When I added back the files from NSB, recover deleted space  worked

Pegasus Mail constantly reads and writes in the mailbox directories but it also updates configuration files in its executables directory every time it starts up and shuts down.  Active scanning may be configured to scan on read or scan on write.  Either way, problems can occur when Pegasus Mail is tries to read or write to a file at the same time that the scanner has it locked for scanning.  There are plenty of discussions that include the recommendation to exclude the Pegasus Mail executables and the \MAIL directory from active scanning.

As for scanning inbound messages, consider this... You can not execute a virus from within the body of an email.  If one comes in via email it is in an attachments or is acquired by clicking a link to an external source.  If there is a virus in an attachment it should be detected when the attachment is opened assuming the temp location it was written to is being actively scanned, or the location it was saved to before being opened is actively scanned.  Remote graphics are potentially dangerous so are not displayed by default.  Nefarious remote graphics links or any other links for that matter would not be detected by a local AV scanner anyway.  There are many folks who run an email scanner or have active scanning enabled that do not encounter a problem.  There are a number who have disabled active scanning to solve a problem.  I suspect there are too many variables to determine why it is problematic for some and not others. 

For my peace of mind I always save potentially hazardous attachments then run a manual scan of the file even though it should have been active scanned when saved.  As for links, I don't click them from an email without knowing the destination URL.  If in doubt I will copy the link and paste into a browser then look at the URL itself before hitting enter to open the page.  That has become mostly unnecessary because both IERenderer and BearHTML display the destination URL when a link is hovered over.

The same read/write access behavior applies to syncing tools and possibly to the Acronis Nonstop Backup you are using.  A sync or backup utility may grab a file at the same time Pegasus Mail tries to use it.  IMHO, AV scanning, backups and syncing of any Pegasus Mail files should be done manually when Pegasus Mail is closed.

FWIW, I run Windows Defender on my Win7 machine (with the exclusions as discussed) and supplement it with period manual scans using Malwarebytes.

BTW, the question of how to exclude location from active scanning in Window Defender has come up before.  Not sure if you need this or not but in case you do...

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/wiki/protect_defender-protect_scanning/how-to-exclude-a-filefolder-from-windows-defender/f32ee18f-a012-4f02-8611-0737570e8eee

Thanks, Brian, I'll work my way through the above. Whatever the problem is, it's new - I've never had problems with Avast, AVG or Norton scanning mail over maybe 20 years, which makes me think it could be Defender or something to do with backup.

I can't afford to lose newish emails, as they are work, so maybe, instead of backing them up, I'll leave them on the server and just delete them from time to time