I find that refreshing the folder usually works, in preview mode.  Its a major nuisance in classic mode.

[Is this the correct place for problem reports?]

Using PMail 4.41 on Windows 2000. 

 I use IMAP extensively, and try to keep an IMAP connection open all the time. However, something in my organisation's internet connection (possibly the firewall) causes the IMAP connection to fail a lot of the time. When this happens Pegasus Mail doesn't seem to handle it well. Although an error message is displayed by Pmail, the status message and red "cancel" button on the status bar are not cleared.

When the IMAP connection has failed many times (over a period of days or even weeks) Pegasus Mail tends to crash the system, with an immediate reboot. While I can't say whether this is related to the IMAP connection failure, I have the impression that it is. Could there be a memory leak when an IMAP connection fails?

Flaky IMAP connections aren't something Pegasus Mail handles that well (indeed, I think most mail programs have problems with it to varying levels). I won't go into too much tedious technical detail, but the internal data models used by the program make recovery from this kind of error condition fairly difficult, and depending on exactly what's happening when the error occurs, recovery sometimes isn't possible at all.

While it's on my general to-do list to get the IMAP code more robust, this isn't going to be a quick operation - you're much better advised to try to work out what is causing the errors and correct those. A first possibility is to extend your IMAP timeout parameters considerably - that might help.

Sorry if this is a sort of non-answer, but at the moment it's about the best I have to offer.

Cheers!

-- David --

Some things you may want to try:

1. You may want to periodically empty the message or header cache for your connection. Right click one of the folders in your IMAP message box and select Folder Information. Click both Clear buttons. This will dump the local message cache for that individual folder. The next time you open the folder it will be a bit slower as Pegasus Mail reloads the details of the folder contents. If this fixes your crashing problems, you can select this to be performed automatically under the Settings tab for that IMAP profile. I haven't had problems with cache corruption in a long time, despite the occasional crashes while testing.
2. If you have your connection set to "Keep a utility connection open..." on the Performance tab, try disabling that option for a while. It may slow a few operations down a bit, but if you're on a fast network connection to the server you shouldn't notice too much of a difference.
   

>Flaky IMAP connections aren't something Pegasus Mail handles that well (indeed, I think most mail programs have problems with it to varying levels).

Yes, Indeed.  

>I won't go into too much tedious technical detail, but the internal data models used by the program make recovery from this kind of error condition fairly difficult, and depending on exactly what's happening when the error occurs, recovery >sometimes isn't possible at all.

Detect time out condition, return to state before last interaction.  Which is what in effect happens when the user closes the program in the task manager and reopens.  I understand this can't be an easy thing to do because almost no imap clients do it.  And none do it well.

>While it's on my general to-do list to get the IMAP code more robust, this isn't going to be a quick operation - you're much better advised to try to work out what is causing the errors and correct those. A first possibility is to extend your IMAP >timeout parameters considerably - that might help.

I am glad to see a programmer talking frankly about this issue.  Yes, changing the timeout from 30 seconds to 300 has eliminated the problems I have been having.  I think I am about to be impressed.

One thing I would ask though, is some way to actually change the mail storage directory.  The function in program setup seems to do nothing.  I changed all the mailbox locations in the registry, no joy.  Uninstall, reinstall, no joy.  It seems Pegasus isn't happy without the mailbox on the C drive.

Gleason

[quote user="sombrero"]

One thing I would ask though, is some way to actually change the mail storage directory. The function in program setup seems to do nothing. I changed all the mailbox locations in the registry, no joy. Uninstall, reinstall, no joy. It seems Pegasus isn't happy without the mailbox on the C drive.

[/quote]

The "Move home mailbox" option in the program is defunct, and has been for many versions. I really can't explain why I've never got around to fixing this - there's no good or logical reason (although the code to do it is very boring, which may be part of the problem).

I'll *try* to get this done as soon as I have the core code compiling again.

Cheers!

-- David --
 

David,

Thanks for prompt answer and the suggestions. I'll try them over the next few weeks.

 btw, I've been a Pegasus user for many many years (back to DOS days), and I want to say a public thank you for what you have given me.
 

[quote user="Barry"]

 btw, I've been a Pegasus user for many many years (back to DOS days), and I want to say a public thank you for what you have given me.

[/quote]

Thank you! It's usually my pleasure. [;)]

Cheers!

-- David --