Just looked in the PDF manual (WinPMailManual-441.pdf) and found something on page 109, Chapter 11, starting the paragraph with the phrse...

"...Recovery of deleted space from folders..."

I (think I) understand what happens with a large number; with 24,000; and with zero.

What I don't really grasp at this time is a small number; e.g., 1,2,3...10 whatever.

I also see in that paragraph....

"...If the folder is very large,.. this process of compression may
become annoying or may take too long...."

Would that giant attachment I tried to send make that folder "very large" enough to cause the very problem I was having ?

If that was the case, then what's causing it now ?

Could I set the value to zero for normal use, then set it to "1" when I'm ready to leave the house for several hours ?

With very few exceptions (this being one of them) Pegasus is extremely good. I would really like to get this under control if possible

I have no clue what happened happened last night, but Pegasus just stopped working; period; no error message, no nothing. The result is a disaster. The key event seems to have been when I tried to send a large attachment to someone.  The attachment was a ZIP file, real big; 255 megabytes. When I came back into the room to check on it, I did see some sort of message on the screen, but before I could read it, it disappeared.  There was an apparent failure notification message from some source, but by that time I could not open that (or any) message or read anything. The disk just spins while neither keyboard nor mouse produce any action on the system as a whole.

Here are the symptoms...

[1] Start Pegasus

[2] Disk starts spinning

[3] Entire computer becomes non-responsive

Examples...

[3-A] Mouse Clicks require 60 to 90 seconds to be recognized

[3-B] ALT-TAB will not switch tasks for 60 seconds or longer

[3-C] I can't end Pegasus

[3-C-1] The "X" box at the top right of Pegasus doesn't work

[3-C-2] Right-Clicking the Pegasus button on the task bar doesn't work

[3-C-2] Windows Task Manager cannot force Pegasus to terminate.

[3-C-3] Windows Task Manager requires 60+ seconds to close any program

If pegasus does reclaim the screen (which usually takes 3 to 5 minutes) all I see is "New Mail Folder" (I think) on the top band, and a totally blank background everywhere else; meanwhile, the disk keeps spinning, continuously.

I let Pegasus spin the disk for 10 or 20 minutes while I did some housework last night. No results. Everything is still unavailable. I use E-mail to pay bills.  This is a significant deterrent. Suggestions are welcome on what I might try.

I suggest you do not send huge files via email systems. Most ISPs will refuse them. Better to try using FTP or even a web service to move files as large as this.  As for your machine, I think it was busy trying to complete a file transfer.

Martin

Hi...

Restart the machine, let it settle down but DO NOT launch Peg' when it has.

Using Windows Explorer, find your way to the main Peg' file tree, then to your mailbox folder.  On my machine, that is C:\PMAIL\MAIL\*user*  where *user* is my Peg user name.

Look for a massive .PMX file, posibly over 500Meg in size, depending on what coding Peg used, if it got that far.  It's creation date will be when you tried to send the message.

Delete that file.  If in doubt, just move it to a totally different folder, well away from Peg's tree, so you can put it back later, if it was not the problem.

Allow Winders to clean itself up, maybe by doing a restart, then see if Peg comes back to life.

As others have said, try not to send such huge attachments to emails, most ISP's will kick much over 10Meg, even if the recipients mailbox is big enough, that I sort of doubt with that file size (255Meg)    Best to use a file sharing or drop box site (choose carefully, not all such places are benign!) or FTP it to your recipient, or allow your recipient to "collect" it by FTP from a server of yours.

Hope something helps.

Dave B.

PS:  So long as Peg' is not running, you can examine and delete outgoing and incoming files from the mailbox, if something "burps" the system.  Some failed mail downloads from my ISP have had to be flushed like that recently, thankfully their servers behave now.

Teke care doing that though, you can totally mess up things poking about in there, if you hit the wrong file.

--- end ---

Thank you for the suggestions.

On the night that I was having these troubles, since I didn't know what to do (and had not heard back from anyone yet) I took the following steps...

[1] Forced hardware shutdown (i.e., the power switch)

[2] Restarted from zero electrons, let windows recover

[3] Started Pegasus exclusively, (i.e., no other apps)

[4] Let him spin away

[5] Went to bed

[6] Woke up next morning

[7] Seemed to have worked

I am now getting occassional system degradation with excessive disk spinning, generally when...

[A] Choosing between folders

Moving a file from "New Mail" or "Main Folder" to one of the other folders I've created.

I am [guessing][assuming] that my name is "Admin" over here, not sure. As a matter of fact, I don't remember ever setting my Pegasus User Name.

I searched my entire disk and did not find a single file with the 3-Letter extension "PMX"

I did find some "PNX"  ("N" instead of "M") files.

Not sure if this helps anything now, but here is a partial file listing of all files in that subdirectory which are more than 10 thousand bytes in size...

--------------------------START------CUT------AND---------PASTE----------------

 Directory of C:\(lblah-blah-blah)\PEGASUS\HOME\MAIL\ADMIN

12/15/2010 10:27 PM 367,712,161 main.PMM
12/15/2010 10:14 PM 360,689,203 FOL07ED1.PMM
12/15/2010 10:10 PM 163,803,667 FOL006A7.PMM
12/08/2010 09:12 PM 47,178,439 FOL0493C.PMM
12/11/2010 12:33 PM 17,177,021 FOL03E62.PMM
12/15/2010 02:33 PM 3,077,610 FOL03B3A.PMM
12/15/2010 10:36 PM 2,427,328 copyself.pmm
12/02/2010 08:53 AM 1,694,555 FOL06A4E.PMM
12/15/2010 02:31 PM 1,459,748 FOL046F1.PMM
12/15/2010 10:10 PM 485,924 FOL006A7.PMI
12/05/2010 04:23 PM 327,780 junk.pmm
12/15/2010 10:14 PM 273,052 FOL07ED1.PMI
12/15/2010 10:14 PM 257,830 copyself.pmi
12/09/2010 12:43 PM 248,299 FOL0500A.PMM
12/02/2010 08:53 AM 158,576 FOL053F0.PMM
12/15/2010 10:14 PM 148,515 SYSLOG.PM
12/11/2010 12:33 PM 69,620 FOL03E62.PMI
12/02/2010 08:53 AM 62,454 FOL003E2.PMM
03/09/2010 09:45 PM 58,640 LNK00C2C.PNL
12/15/2010 10:36 PM 55,093 PMAIL.INI
12/08/2010 09:12 PM 32,214 FOL0493C.PMI
08/21/2008 05:09 AM 28,583 spambust.dat
08/21/2008 05:09 AM 16,384 words4.db3
11/18/2008 12:51 AM 11,444 LNK0767A.PNL
12/15/2010 02:31 PM 10,384 FOL046F1.PMI

---------------------------END-------CUT------AND---------PASTE----------------

When the disk goes spinning now, (and the entire system slows to near zero) I can, on occasion, see a little box on the screen that says something about "compressing" something; folder or file or something; 

These episodes tend to last 3-to-5 minutes or so; maybe 20 minutes. I generally get up and do housework or something, and force the reboot if the disk is still spinning when I return.

So anyway, it appears that "File Compression" (whatever that means today) is the current culprit which is causing my spinning disk and slow system for now. Is there some way that I can turn that off ?