Thanks Brian, the very large culprit was a failed delivery message which related to just the files I wanted to send.  I deleted it and Pegasus started again.

I was sending a total of 11 attachments (3 in jpg format, the rest tiff) when Pegasus crashed on the attempted send, and still crashed after a restart of my computer and the programme.  How do I rescue this?

Have a look in your mailbox directory. There should be one or more files with a specific filename and extensions PMW, PNX and/or PMX. Delete (or move) them and Pegasus should start again.

Did Pegasus crash or didn't Pegasus react any more. TIFF are usualy very large and it may take a while sending them or your provider even doesn't accept mails with such large attachments.

bye    Olaf

I made several atteempts to restart Pegasus and all failed. Thanks for your advice - I was wondering along such lines. I'll have a look

I made several attempts to restart Pegasus and all failed -- just tried to start and got stuck. Thanks for your advice - I was wondering along such lines. I've deleted two .PMX files and tried again, but Pegasus still seeems stuck at opening new mail folder. I notice there is another large file, which I opened with Textpad. It seems to be a record of received e-mails since at least last autumn.FOLO6BFO.PMM -- most long since moved or deleted. What purpose does it serve?

The files I deleted were .PMX by the way

[quote user="Niall Martin"]I made several attempts to restart Pegasus and all failed -- just tried to start and got stuck. Thanks for your advice - I was wondering along such lines. I've deleted two .PMX files and tried again, but Pegasus still seeems stuck at opening new mail folder. I notice there is another large file, which I opened with Textpad. It seems to be a record of received e-mails since at least last autumn.FOLO6BFO.PMM -- most long since moved or deleted. What purpose does it serve?[/quote]

A .PMM file is a Pegasus Mail folder file and can be left alone.

As for the hang during opening new mail,  this is normally an indication of an unreadable new message file.  This causes Pegasus Mail to hang during its attempt to process new message files.  To solve the problem you must identify the problem file and take it out of the picture.

To do this, use a file explorer to navigate to your new mail directory.  First look for any zero byte .CNM files.  If found, delete them then test a Pegasus Mail startup.  If you don't find any, or the startup still hangs, go back to the new mail directory, sort the file list by date, then move to a temporary location all of the .CNM files newer than the last time Pegasus Mail started normally.  Pegasus Mail should now start up.  Shut it down then move a few of the .CNM files back, keeping track of which ones you moved, test a startup.  Repeat until Pegasus Mail hangs.  You then know it is a file in that last batch that is the problem.  Narrow it down from there.

If Pegasus Mail should hang after moving out just the newest .CNM files then move them all out and test.  If startup is successful, follow the steps above to identify the problem file.

Note: .CNM files are plain text files so you can use a text editor to view the content of the bad file to see if it was important.