It was probably a W2003 server hiccup... :)

It wasn't possible to delete the .pmm file from my workstation.

I deleted the file working on the local drive of the server.

Everything's ok now.

"A serious error has occurred while Pegasus Mail was compressing this folder, and data may have been lost. You should exit from Pegasus Mail as quickly as possible and use an undelete utility to recover the files main.PMI and/or main.PMM."

This has occurred on two separate occassions, both times when I was closing PMail, after browsing and deleting msgs from the "Main" folder. It is configured to receive copies of already opened/read e-mails automatically. It's a regular pain as the copies of those msgs are the only one's on my computer. I have yet to find an "unrecover" program that does anything except sometimes cost me money!

If the msgs are still on my isp server I can download again. If not, I'm out of luck. I have PMail pop set to leave copies on the server, however, the first time this "write error" occurred I had just deleted all the msgs on the server. I suspect that the msgs are actually still on my disk, but without the folder index I am unable to access them. Both main.pmi and main.pmm are still on the disk in the appropriate directory, however, they are outdated by about 10 days or so and thus do not contain any e-mails later than about two weeks ago.

Any advice or suggestions appreciated.

Thanks DW

> "A serious error has occurred while Pegasus Mail was compressing this folder, and data may have been lost. You should exit from Pegasus Mail
> as quickly as possible and use an undelete utility to recover the files main.PMI and/or main.PMM."

A few things can cause this.

1.    Lack of free drive space.  There must be twice as much free drive space and the size of the folder since the compress process needs to mirror the folder.

2.    Another application fighting Pegasus Mail for control of the file.  Pegasus Mail MUST have exclusive access during the compress.

3.    The files are on a network drive and the access to the network drive is lost.


> This has occurred on two separate occassions, both times when I was closing PMail, after browsing and deleting msgs from the "Main"
> folder. It is configured to receive copies of already opened/read
> e-mails automatically. It's a regular pain as the copies of those msgs are the only one's on my computer. I have yet to find an "unrecover"
> program that does anything except sometimes cost me money!

I did a quick search on file recovery software and found the freeware FIle Recovery 4 http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/filerecovery.html

> If the msgs are still on my isp server I can download again. If not, I'm out of luck. I have PMail pop set to leave copies on the server,
> however, the first time this "write error" occurred I had just deleted all the msgs on the server. I suspect that the msgs are actually
> still on my disk, but without the folder index I am unable to access them. Both main.pmi and main.pmm are still on the disk in the appropriate

Thanks for the help! Neither network drive or lack of space are the issue in this case. When you say "Pegasus Mail MUST have exclusive access..." are you referring to the file or the drive?

If the drive ... can I then infer that installing PMail on a RAID array is not  recommended? Is the compression algorithm Pegasus uses proprietary or one of the standard types?

The File Undelete/recovery program was written in 2005, uses _int13.vxd and references Win9x, so I will add to the long list of unsuccessful file recovery programs that I have tried. Thanks for the tip, though! I appreciate the effort.

DW

> Thanks for the help! Neither network drive or lack of space are the issue in this case. When you say "Pegasus Mail MUST have exclusive
> access..." are you referring to the file or the drive?

The files.  All of the Pegasus Mail files require exclusive open of the files and especially the folders during a compress option.  This can really be affected by many of the very aggressive anti-virus programs out there that grab files with Pegasus Mail is trying to open them.

> If the drive ... can I then infer that installing PMail on a RAID array is not  recommended?

Not at all, I've used it on RAID setups with no problems at all.  The anti-virus software thou was not allowed to touch any of the Pegasus Mail directories or files. FWIW, David uses a RAID in the development environment.

> Is the compression algorithm Pegasus uses proprietary or one of the standard types? 

It's pretty straight forward.  Pegasus Mail  simply rebuilds the PMM file based on the data in the PMI file by reading from the PMM file and writing to a temp file skipping all files in the PMM file that were marked for deletion in the PMI file.  At the end of the process the PMM file is deleted and the temp file renamed to the name of the PMM file.

> The File Undelete/recovery program was written in 2005, uses _int13.vxd and references Win9x, so I will add to the long list of
> unsuccessful file recovery programs that I have tried. Thanks for the tip, though! I appreciate the effort.

Are you saying it does not work?  It was advertised to work on Win7.

I wasn't able to get the file recovery program to recognize individual volumes on my drives or any files on the drives. I assumed that due to the use of the W98 driver the program wasn't able to read FAT32 or NTFS large volumes. I seem to find that most file recovery programs are big on advertising and poor on performance!

I have discovered that in Windows 7 there is, in the User\%username%\AppData\Local\Virtual Store\Program Files directory a partial copy of the PMail program directory that I installed in %systemroot%\Program Files. The virtual copy of Pmail holds only the Mail folder with my mailbox sub-directories and copies of all the files therein, no actual PMail operable files, just the storage folder/tray files and index files that are in the user mailbox directory. New folders/trays that I create in Pegasus are created in the virtual mailbox but not in the original mailbox location. The virtual Pmail folder has a "Pegasus.ini" file that contains a typical .ini heading [Systemwide Folders] and nothing else!

This may have something to do with the disappearing icons, that BTW are only intermittently missing not to mention the Main.pmm write error. Sometimes when Pegasus starts they are there (graphics only) and sometimes not. I'm not clear on why Win7 has written and uses a virtual copy of the mailbox folders from Pmail. Vista does not appear to have done so even though the rest of the files (other software than Pegasus) in both Virtual Stores appear to be about the same. I have a dual boot set up with most programs installed in both OS's to the same directory!

I gather Pegasus does not actually compress files other than by deleting copies of user deleted email as per the .pmi file?  

Same warning, but different situation:

I copied all the messages from the corrupted folder to a new one.

Now I want to delete the corrupted folder but if I try to, Pegasus give same warning.

I tried to reindex it (successfully) but still cannot delete it.

I cannot recover the .PMI file, I tried to cheat PM making an empty .PMI file, it reindex but then, trying to delete the folder from within PM, yields same warning.

I tried to delete .PMM file but it seem W2000 server feel it to be locked and I cannot delete it (maybe waiting for some minutes...)

How can I delete that folder?