Thanks guys for your prompt and detailed help, really appreciate your efforts and nice to know the Peguasus forum is alive and well even if I seldom need it (thankfully).

Slowly getting things back to normal after my rebuild, and really pleased Pegasus is up and running again and more importantly nothing is lost.  One of those jobs you do infrqeuently, but when it needs doing its back to square one and reading all the manuals etc.[*-)]

 Many thanks

Alan.

For years I have used Pegasus.  About a year ago I lost my XP due to a virus, and at that time Pegasus was using default folders to store mail etc in (which was on my windows partition) and thus the rebuild lost everything.  At that rebuild I set about forcing Pegasus to store messages etc on the partition that MyDocs resides in, on the basis that the next XP rebuild would not lose all my pegasus mail etc.

 Well I just got destroyed by a virus and have now had to rebuild XP, but for the life of me I can't get Pegasus to pick up on all the old emails and settings that have survived in my seperate partition.  It appears I have set Pegasus to point at my original PMAIL/MAIL folder structure, but everytime I load Pegasus, it still just presents the virgin folders with the single intro message within.

 Looking into the MAIL and MAIL/ADMIN folders at the .ini files therein, all appears to my untrained eye to look ok.  But still Pegasus refuses to load this configuration setting or "see" all the mail files.

Any help or guidance would be most appreciated at this difficult time.

> For years I have used Pegasus.  About a year ago I lost my XP due to a
> virus, and at that time Pegasus was using default folders to store
> mail etc in (which was on my windows partition) and thus the rebuild
> lost everything.  At that rebuild I set about forcing Pegasus to store
> messages etc on the partition that MyDocs resides in, on the basis
> that the next XP rebuild would not lose all my pegasus mail etc.

Sounds like a good plan.

>  Well I just got destroyed by a virus and have now had to rebuild XP,

How do you keep getting caught by viruses?

> but for the life of me I can't get Pegasus to pick up on all the old
> emails and settings that have survived in my separate partition.  It
> appears I have set Pegasus to point at my original PMAIL/MAIL folder
> structure, but everytime I load Pegasus, it still just presents the
> virgin folders with the single intro message within.

Use Help | About Pegasus Mail | Info and copy and paste these data into a reply.  Also supply the actual path to the mail directory on the MyDocs partition.

>  Looking into the MAIL and MAIL/ADMIN folders at the .ini files
> therein, all appears to my untrained eye to look ok.  But still
> Pegasus refuses to load this configuration setting or "see" all the
> mail files. Any help or guidance would be most appreciated at this
> difficult time.

The pmail.ini file may or may not help here.  It is the pmail.cfg file in the Pegasus Mail program directory (managed by pconfig.exe) that is used to tell Pegasus Mail on startup the location of the Pegasus Mail mail directories.
 

 

Hi Thomas

While you were typing your reply - I was getting desperate - and after reading lots of posts on this forum was getting the impression that something crude could be done (and anyway I got no emails at the moment, so nothing to lose) so i did the following.

 Before I started playing - I had made a carbon copy of my existing mail data folders (the ones on my E: drive) for safety.

I then installed Pegasus (getting good at this now) and directed it to store program (and thus data) in a new folder on my E: drive. Had read someone else did this as a complete getaway from OS rebuild disasters.  At this point of course it just knows about the virgin 4 folders with their single intro messages in each.

Then I boldly copied the ADMIN folder (and everything in it) from my old installation to the ADMIN folder of my new installation, cautiously saying yes to "overwrite" requests.

And it all worked!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have restored all my old folder, their contents, my adress lists, and all settings - perfect.

Only puzzle I have is that I have just peeked in PMAIL.INI (new installation) in the ADMIN folder and the data in the "run info" section is not correct.  Is this redundant?  As Pegasus seems to know just where to actually look, as not only is the 'Help/About/Info' data good, but I also renamed the old folder pointed to, and things still run ok.

Apart from that anomaly - things are looking good.

Thank you very much for your time and help - I really appreciate your prompt answer, and am interested in any comment you might have regarding the above puzzle.

 King regards

Alan.

 PS: I don't keep getting caught by viruses, I think this was an inadvertant click on an unfamiliar web site, but it rapidly took over my system, disabled task manager, and even survived a power-off reboot - nasty!  But I like rebuilding XP [;)] on its own partition it's a wonderful housekeeping opportunity, and I've only had to do it twice since I built my system in 2008.

The last run info is only updated when/if a change was made to settings stored in the pmail.ini file so if you change one setting and save it will update or you can force an update by doing File, hold ctrl key, and hit Exit.

> I then installed Pegasus (getting good at this now) and directed it to
> store program (and thus data) in a new folder on my E: drive. Had read
> someone else did this as a complete getaway from OS rebuild disasters.
>  At this point of course it just knows about the virgin 4 folders with
> their single intro messages in each.

If you do not tell it to install the basic user then when first started it will ask you where you want to look for the new mail.  

> Then I boldly copied the ADMIN folder (and everything in it) from my
> old installation to the ADMIN folder of my new installation,
> cautiously saying yes to "overwrite" requests.

That will do it as long as the pmail.ini in the backup has basically correct structure and you do this when PMail is not running.



> And it all worked!!!!!!!!!!!!
> Have restored all my old folder, their contents, my adress lists, and all settings - perfect.
>
> Only puzzle I have is that I have just peeked in PMAIL.INI (new
> installation) in the ADMIN folder and the data in the "run info"
> section is not correct.  Is this redundant?  As Pegasus seems to know
> just where to actually look, as not only is the 'Help/About/Info' data
> good, but I also renamed the old folder pointed to, and things still
> run ok.

This is written when Pegasus Mail is closed and it should match the current info.


> Apart from that anomaly - things are looking good.
>
> Thank you very much for your time and help - I really appreciate your
> prompt answer, and am interested in any comment you might have
> regarding the above puzzle.
>
>  King regards
> Alan.
>
>  PS: I don't keep getting caught by viruses, I think this was an
> inadvertent click on an unfamiliar web site, but it rapidly took over
> my system, disabled task manager, and even survived a power-off reboot
> - nasty!  But I like rebuilding XP  on its own partition it's a
> wonderful housekeeping opportunity, and I've only had to do it twice
> since I built my system in 2008.

I agree and most corporations install it like this so that they can easily do remote upgrades as well.  Normally XP is installed on a 2 GByte partition and all user data goes to the main partition.  In this case Pegasus Mail, when installed locally, was installed to the d: drive.  Of course when I was setting this up Pegasus Mail (and other programs) was running on a server and only a shortcut was on any local drive. ;-) This way if a computer crashed all you needed to do was walk over and use a different computer until the computer was fixed/replaced.