[quote user="subelman"]

We have lost the contents of pmail.ini in the following two scenarios:

1) Somebody is running Pegasus as email user 'fred' on one computer. While this is happening, someone uses a second computer in the network and tries to become email user 'fred'. Pegasus gives them a warning that the 'fred' account is in use, but if the second user clicks on 'Continue' anyway the result is that fred's pmail.ini is wiped out. Users have to be trained never to click on Continue. However, that creates a problem when a PC is rebooted while Pmail is running, because now the 'fred' account is locked and they have a legitimate reason to click on 'Continue'. My cure is to make hourly backups of all the pmail.ini files, so when one is wiped out, I can recover quickly.

Not sure why this is happening to you, it does not happen when I do this.  The hierarch.pm and/or folders could be affected of course with two users running as the same user but the pmail.ini should not be cleared out unless there is something else at the OS level keeping PMail from accessing the file.  The lock file will be cleared and the program opened but as soon as it's opened the pmail.ini file is no longer held open.

2)  Similar but nastier: somebody is running Pegasus as email user 'fred' on one computer. While this is happening, someone uses a second computer as a different Pmail user (not 'fred'). Then this second user uses the  "Change user ..." option of Pegasus to change to user 'fred'. This case is fatal: the second user is told that the 'fred' account is in use, and given the choice to 'Cancel' or 'Continue'. But whichever choice this second user makes, the pmail.ini file for the 'fred' account gets wiped out. This is really a nasty: by the time the second user is told the 'fred' account is in use, it's already too late - there is nothing she can do to prevent the damage. Hourly backups of pmail.in filesi, and a strict prohibition against the use of 'Change user ...' are my solution.

If you upgrade to v4.50 you will find that this option is no longer available.   With v4.41 you can use the disable extension

The DISABLE extension allows you to override almost any main menu function within WinPMail.  It simply pops up a message box
with the text "This option has been disabled by the Network Supervisor" when the user either selects the option from the menu,
or presses the shortcut key, or clicks the associatied button bar button.

New versions of the DISABLE extension are now available in both 16-bit and 32-bit flavours at:

                    ftp://tui.lincoln.ac.nz

Filenames are DISABL16.ZIP and DISABL32.ZIP. [/quote]

 kia ora

we have set up a a 3 machine network at  home with mercury (4.6.2) and pmail ( 4.41 ) on windows XP

all is working well but we seem to be "losing" pmail.ini on our 2 users regularily. 2 or 3 times a week we have to reenter information in Tools | Options such as personal name , reply to email etc

 I have had a pretty good look on this forum and followed a few leads but no luck

we are running AVG antivirus and there was one suggestion that antivirus software may cause some problems but disbaling that does not seem to have helped

perhaps vieing some logs may assist but which ones?

thanks in advance for any assistance

evan

we are running AVG antivirus and there was one suggestion that

antivirus software may cause some problems but disbaling that does not

seem to have helped

This is odd, because I run AVGfree and Vista with Pegasus Mail, and have had no such problems.  I've made no special settings or exclusions in AVG.

We have lost the contents of pmail.ini in the following two scenarios:

1) Somebody is running Pegasus as email user 'fred' on one computer. While this is happening, someone uses a second computer in the network and tries to become email user 'fred'. Pegasus gives them a warning that the 'fred' account is in use, but if the second user clicks on 'Continue' anyway the result is that fred's pmail.ini is wiped out. Users have to be trained never to click on Continue. However, that creates a problem when a PC is rebooted while Pmail is running, because now the 'fred' account is locked and they have a legitimate reason to click on 'Continue'. My cure is to make hourly backups of all the pmail.ini files, so when one is wiped out, I can recover quickly.

2)  Similar but nastier: somebody is running Pegasus as email user 'fred' on one computer. While this is happening, someone uses a second computer as a different Pmail user (not 'fred'). Then this second user uses the  "Change user ..." option of Pegasus to change to user 'fred'. This case is fatal: the second user is told that the 'fred' account is in use, and given the choice to 'Cancel' or 'Continue'. But whichever choice this second user makes, the pmail.ini file for the 'fred' account gets wiped out. This is really a nasty: by the time the second user is told the 'fred' account is in use, it's already too late - there is nothing she can do to prevent the damage. Hourly backups of pmail.in filesi, and a strict prohibition against the use of 'Change user ...' are my solution.