Jerry Wise,

I can't thank you enough for the link to http://www.vandenbogaerde.net/pegasusmail/pf_pmfiles.html.

I suffered some kind of accident to my computer and have been troubleshooting it trying to recover. The only thing I've not been able to recover from has been that two of my three stand-alone Pegasus programs have somehow gotten the folders fractured and mixed together and I've been trying to somehow weed them out and bring the most current program, 4.62,  to some workable condition, but I've not been able to figure out which program files define the folders. I've used Pegasus since 1999 so my entire personal and business life is pretty well filed away in the folders and I sure don't want to lose them or access to them. It's been such a complex mess that I didn't even know how to ask questions so I could get help and have been trying to figure out what program files may carry the instructions for the program so I can find them and try to either fix them or replace them. Now that I have this list, I may stand some chance of fixing things.

 Thanks again.

Judi :-)

Brief Background:

2008 an accident saw me in hospital and then a rehabilitation centre for the best part of a year. A friends gave me an old laptop (there was wi fi) and I installed Pegasus, which I've been using since '96. There where a few problems, as much to do though with old laptop but it was a godsend and kept me going.

As the laptop was on its last legs when I got out I transferred everything on it. Currently I've got Pegasus 4.63 an IBM Thinkpad with OS XP Pro. Generally fine apart from the occasional glitch, eg:

• sometimes all folders and mail I have open will disappear leaving a blank screen. Using 'Tile' in the Windows menu I get them back.

 

• when adding or editing a mail in an address list sometimes it will duplicate leaving on at the beginning and the other in alphabetical order

 

Today

Things started running slowly on the laptop including Pegasus. Didn't see any message about being low on virtual memory but closed the machine down and rebooted. When I opened Pegasus I found some folders missing from the Folder list and some address lists blank.

Going to the PMAIL folder and looking in ADMIN I can see all the Folder files are still there, just there not all showing in the Folder list (did try to have a look in *.PMM and *.PMI files in ADMIN but can't find any way to open them). The addresses are also still there. I don't know which files they are but if I start to type a name in an email from a blank address list it is automatically completed.

I have rebooted, run set-up again but things remain the same with the missing folders and blank address lists. How can I get everything set up again as it should be (including, ideally, the glitches mentioned above).

Thanks,

Guy

I am not sure exactly what you want help with or what first. A listing of files and function and location can be found at http://www.vandenbogaerde.net/pegasusmail/pf_pmfiles.html

There are various places and files that contain address information and recently used addresses. The listing of folders is found in the hierarch.pm file and other files also.

Do you have any recent backup that would contain some files in their state of a few days ago fir example before the latest error occurred? 

It sounds as if you have had an incomplete closure of Pegasus Mail and that may indicate an hardware or OS system problem or drive problem.

Agreed, clearly there was some problem when I shut down and there could well have been an incomplete closure. All seems to be up and running again though now, except for Pegasus that is.

As for what I want help with simply how to get Pegasus properly restored to how it was. In fact I've solved the Addressbooks problem. Never really noticed, or at least not paid attention to the 'Reindex addressbook' option under the Book icon in the adressbook. Tried it and it's restored the empty addressbooks. Now all I need to do is restore the missing mail folders so they show in the Folders list. Pity there's no Reindex for that!

I will have a look at the files listing lin and see if that can help. Unfortunately no recent backup

>

Now all I need to do is restore the missing mail folders so they show in the Folders list. Pity there's no Reindex for that!

While winpm-32 is closed go to your home mail box location and rename hierarch.pm  to hierarch.pm.bak and then restart winpm-32 again.  All folder file pairs *.pmm and *.pmi will be recognized. All will be in flat top level now and no tray, if used, will exist any longer.

What version are you using currently? In latest versions a repair tool mbxmaint_ui.exe is included in the programs location. Make a backup of all *.pmm folder files and then with winpm-32 closed run the mbxmaint_ui to reindex, check, or attempt repair of folders  individually or using wild card to do all \*.pmm.

If a folder file is not repairable you may be able to use NOTSPLIT to extract all the messages and to make them new *.cnm files again. There are then two options on  how to handle that also. 

Using 4.63 which, afaik, is the latest (I updated beginning of the year)

Will check out the rest. Probably try renaming hierach first. Presume this is in ADMIN folder but will find it

Thanks!

Closed winpm-32 and added .bak to hierach.pm and reopened. Folders list had been changed to flat top level but no sign of missing folders. Found mbxmaint-ui maintenance tool, Backed up .pm files, closed winpm-32, found mbxmaint-ui maintenance tool and rain both check and repair (no reindex). In both with wildcard goes no further than first folder showing:

Checking 'copyself.PMM'...

Warning: message 4686 has non-unique ID part (7PM$0387.PM$)

!! Found internal consistency error:

#017 Folder contains 1 messages with non-unique IDs

** Note **

Non-unique IDs are only a problem if you access this folder via IMAP.

You can fix non-unique IDs using the 'Fix IDs' tab without otherwise

altering or rebuilding the folder.

and then stops. Running singly on a missing folder it checks:

Checking 'FOL06F0F.PMM'...

Folder appears OK - no consistency errors encountered.

but on opening winpm-32 no sign of missing folder in folders list.

Have tried something I used from long ago, before usb's, ect. Copy missing .pmm file to a blank folder elsewhere. Create new folder in Pegasus. Change fielname of moved .pmm file to same as new folder and paste into ADMIN. Reindex new folder and missing folder is restored in Folders list. It works but is very slow and cumbersome (plus with reindexing the risk of change of status, loss of annotations, etc). There must be an easier and quicker way?

One other drawback with above - to find out what each folder is in the ADMIN folder I've had to view the .pmi file in wordpad. Now under name the .pmi files show a wordpad icon.

> Have tried something I used from long ago, before usb's, ect. Copy missing
> .pmm file to a blank folder elsewhere. Create new folder in Pegasus.
> Change fielname of moved .pmm file to same as new folder and paste into
> ADMIN. Reindex new folder and missing folder is restored in Folders list.
> It works but is very slow and cumbersome (plus with reindexing the risk of
> change of status, loss of annotations, etc). There must be an easier and
> quicker way?

I'm surprised this works because Pegasus uses unique folder ID's not folder names for reference and renaming a folder doesn't change it's ID.  Pegasus won't display folders that don't have a unique ID.  There is a utility called PMRestArch that was created for the purpose of restoring archived Pegasus folder files so that they can be used by Pegasus without the concern for duplicate folder IDs.  It might be worthwhile to use it to insure unique IDs for all folders.  You would need to move all of your pmm/pmi file pairs to a different windows folder then use PMRestArch to restore them back to the mailbox folder.  Do this with Pegasus closed.  Make a backup copy of the mailbox folder first, just in case.

I don't think this will do anything to address the consistency issues but may resolve the problem of folders not being listed

You can find PMRestArch at:  http://www.lexacorp.com.pg/lexacorp_utilities.html#EMail


> One other drawback with above - to find out what each folder is in the
> ADMIN folder I've had to view the .pmi file in wordpad. Now under name the
> .pmi files show a wordpad icon.

This is a Windows thing.  It indicates that .pmi files are now associated with Wordpad.  This can happen if you use the right click context menu and select Open then select the app you want to use.  If you don't uncheck the option that says "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" Windows will associate the selected application with that file type.  You can undo this by going to the File Types tab in Folder Options and remove the association of .pmi files with Wordpad.