Glad to have been able to help.

Win 7, Pmail vs. 4.7

My mail stopped working and I no doubt did some dumb things in trying to get it back.

How it stopped: It would not load completely; stopped at retrieving files with the logo up.

When did it stop: I had just previously forwarded an email with several attachments

to 15 individuals, one or two of which could have had bad addresses. The size of

the email was about 12Mb.

What did I do: I (partially!!) remembered from past experience that I should try removing

recent files from ADMIN, so I removed all the files from that day. Then started putting them

back one at a time. Pmail loaded OK, but my desktop was somewhat messed up. I continued

with a couple more files and then got a message "User Name Please." I not sure what name

is wanted, but I tried all I could think of - to no avail. I have copied the ADMIN file to a USB

drive for safety (a little late,right?).

Please help: this is like technological dementia -- a lot of my past memories are unavailable. 

[quote user="rgakins"]My mail stopped working and I no doubt did some dumb things in trying to get it back.

 How it stopped: It would not load completely; stopped at retrieving files with the logo up.

When did it stop: I had just previously forwarded an email with several attachments

to 15 individuals, one or two of which could have had bad addresses. The size of

the email was about 12Mb.[/quote]

Did you allow it plenty of time to start up or did you see "not responding" and thought it had hung.  The "not responding" appears because when Pegasus Mail is busy it fails to acknowledge queries from the OS.  This can happen during TCP activity like when downloading or sending large files or a large number of messages.  The "not responding" verbiage is not a reliable indicator of a hang.

recent files from ADMIN, so I removed all the files from that day. Then started putting them

back one at a time. Pmail loaded OK, but my desktop was somewhat messed up. I continued

with a couple more files and then got a message "User Name Please." I not sure what name

is wanted, but I tried all I could think of - to no avail. I have copied the ADMIN file to a USB

drive for safety (a little late,right?).[/quote]

Did you put all of the files back into ADMIN that you moved out?  You probably noticed that some were recreated which is why the desktop looked different and you were prompted for a user name (did you try "admin").  The recreated ones should have been overwritten by the ones moved out.  These would have included pmail.ini, state.pmj, folstate.pm, heirarch.pm.  Restoring the mailbox directory, ADMIN, back to the state is was before moving anything out would be the best place to start troubleshooting from, if that is possible.

What you were probably thinking of was the trick of ruling out a bad new-message file by moving .CNM files out of the mailbox directory.  If Pegasus Mail then starts up, the assumption is athat there is a bad file so you the process of moving them back a few at a time is used to identify the bad one.  

Did you allow it plenty of time to start up?

I think so -- the little "busy" circle was rotating and I when away for about

30 min. and it was still rotating. The message at the bottom of the Pegasus

logo said something to the effect, " reading input files..."

As far as restoring ADMIN to its original state: I can do that with the exception

of the exception of the 4 files you mentioned, which have been overwritten.

If you haven't tried starting Pegasus Mail using the username "admin" you should try that.  If it still hangs during download then access the mailbox using webmail and review teh messages that have arrived since the last successful download for any indication that they might be causing the problem.  Delete all that are spam.  Try Pegasus Mail again.  If it still hangs on download turn on session logging the try again.  Review the resulting log to determine what is occurring when the logging stops.

The log switch is located in Tools > Internet Options, at the bottom of the General tab.  Read the help file about what is logged and where to find the log.  Be careful not to post the entire log herr because login credentials are in the log (encoded,but easily decoded).  Don't forget to turn session logging off when done troubleshooting.

I tried "admin" and every other possible username I could think of and all without success.

You said, "access the mailbox using webmail." What do you mean by that?

If it is a hosted mailbox like gmail, outlook, yahoo, roadrunner... they are accessible via a browser which is what I referred to as "webmail".

If your installation is a simple one (single user, only one identity, retrieving mail from only one hosted mailbox) then it might be best to do a clean installation and the recover data for the old mailbox.  There are certain steps you must take to insure you get a clean install so post back for details if you choose to go this route.

[quote user="rgakins"]

I tried "admin" and every other possible username I could think of and all without success.

You said, "access the mailbox using webmail." What do you mean by that?

[/quote]

Your installation will include a file named pmail.usr

Open it with a text editor and the username(s) will be listed. They are normally the same as the folder names present under the Mail sub-folder.

The sub-folder is Admin and that is what is in pmail.usr, but that name

(with or without the initial capital) doesn't work. I'm going to be away from 

this computer for about 3 weeks so I don't want you to think I have given

up. I will revive this discussion at that time. Thanks for the help.

I'm back from vacation and wanting to get PMAIL working again. Thanks for the help so far. The following is the content of the pmail.usr file:

; PMAIL.USR Pegasus Mail user database.
A;Admin;Mail Administrator

I guessing that I might have to reinstall Pmail. If so, what is the best way to have as much of my previous contents, desktop, etc. recovered?

Is suspect as you do that your initial recovery attempts left some configuration files messed up to the point that you can no longer access the old mailbox.  Hopefully you have a backup to restored from because I think your best bet is to do a clean install and then restore just the data files from the old mailbox.  I can't emphasize enough that you can't simply copy the entire mailbox contents, you must copy only the data.  Below are instructions on doing a clean install and the information where you can download a whitepaper specific to copying date from on old mailbox to a new one.

To do a clean install assuming the existing installation is in C:\PMAIL (post back if it isn't):

1.  Make a backup copy of the entire C:\PMAIL directory including all subdirectories and files.

2.  With Pegasus Mail closed, rename C:\PMAIL to C:\PMAIL_SAVED.  Do not run Pegasus Mail from this location because it will create unwanted registry entries.

3.  Install Pegasus Mail to C:\PMAIL

4.  Configure it and test.  Do not create any new folders. Consider using a printout or text display of the pmail.ini file from the old mailbox directory for reference during configuration.

5.  Copy the data from your old mailbox.  DO NOT copy all files from your old mailbox directory.  You must insure that none of the configuration files are brought over.  There should not be any overwrites.  If in doubt ask before copying or make a backup of the mailbox directory first so you can restore it if the copy causes problems. 

The white paper on what files to copy can be downloaded from the Downloads section of this community site.  Here is the URL:  http://community.pmail.com/files/folders/whitepapers/entry41852.aspx

Note:  Any tray structure that you had in your old folder list will be lost.  There is no way around that.  Well, there might be a way, but, IMHO, figuring it out then doing it are not worth the effort.

Thanks, Brian, for all the help. I have recovered almost everything with a few minor exceptions. Whew![:D]