Just to close up some loose end now I am here.

I gave up trying to understand this problem. I cleaned and reinstalled and just kept program and mailbox together on C:  This way it works without problems. It only means that I should back-up a bit more often; having the mailboxes on D: (physically different HDD) was mainly an extra security against a possible failing C: drive.

Too bad about not being able to explain or show what went wrong, but it was costing me too much time trying to figure it out.

Thomas, thanks for trying to help.

Keep up the good work

McDuff 

At our small non-profit, we are all using Pmail for more than 10 years  [:)].   I have updated Pmail regularly and transferred between computers without problems until now.

Uninstalled and re-installed pmail (spamfilter did not work) few days ago, copied mailboxes back etc.

The new installed PMail did not allow me back in, mentioning that "The user you are attempting to 'become' (...) does not exist on this system". Re-installed again, same problem. Uninstalled, searched for "Pegasus" and "Pmail" in registry, system files, etc and deleted all references, downloaded fresh version of Pmail, installed without copying old files back and different location for mail boxes,.....same problem.

I checked pmail.ini, pmail.usr, registry references. All show my username like it should. Compared files with those on two other computers..no differences as far as I can see. Tried adding different users, etc. No dice, no entry. Googled for this problem, could not find a solution either.

Any idea what can be wrong, which file I can check?

Thanks, keep up the good work,

Mcduff 

Platform: Running XP Home SP2 updated, NOD32 Antivirus and Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE (this one only regular manual scanning, not permanently running).

[quote user="mcduff"]

At our small non-profit, we are all using Pmail for more than 10 years  [:)].   I have updated Pmail regularly and transferred between computers without problems until now.

Uninstalled and re-installed pmail (spamfilter did not work) few days ago, copied mailboxes back etc.

The new installed PMail did not allow me back in, mentioning that "The user you are attempting to 'become' (...) does not exist on this system". Re-installed again, same problem. Uninstalled, searched for "Pegasus" and "Pmail" in registry, system files, etc and deleted all references, downloaded fresh version of Pmail, installed without copying old files back and different location for mail boxes,.....same problem.

I checked pmail.ini, pmail.usr, registry references. All show my username like it should. Compared files with those on two other computers..no differences as far as I can see. Tried adding different users, etc. No dice, no entry. Googled for this problem, could not find a solution either.

Any idea what can be wrong, which file I can check?

Thanks, keep up the good work,

Mcduff 

Platform: Running XP Home SP2 updated, NOD32 Antivirus and Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE (this one only regular manual scanning, not permanently running).

[/quote]

About 99.9% of the time the problem is that the HOME and NEW mail directory spec is incorrect.  Go to the WinPMail program directory and run pconfig.exe.  Select the "Standalone" menu and reset the HOME and NEW mail directory spec to reflect the current location.  This is usually something like c:\pmail\mail \~8 where c:\pmail\mail is the location of the pmail.usr file and the ~8 represents the users mailbox names.  If yuo are running from a server from remote location then this should be \\server\volume\pmail\mail\~8 so that the remote systems are not looking at the local hard drives for the mail.

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]

About 99.9% of the time the problem is that the HOME and NEW mail directory spec is incorrect.  Go to the WinPMail program directory and run pconfig.exe.  Select the "Standalone" menu and reset the HOME and NEW mail directory spec to reflect the current location.  This is usually something like c:\pmail\mail \~8 where c:\pmail\mail is the location of the pmail.usr file and the ~8 represents the users mailbox names.  If yuo are running from a server from remote location then this should be \\server\volume\pmail\mail\~8 so that the remote systems are not looking at the local hard drives for the mail.

 [/quote]

 
My luck that I got the 0,1%: pconfig showed correct specs. Changing names in the actual location and in the pconfic also did not help.

Thanks anyway for the quick reply. At least I learned something new, did not know about the pconfig.exe 

Mcduff 

[quote user="mcduff"][quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]

About 99.9% of the time the problem is that the HOME and NEW mail directory spec is incorrect.  Go to the WinPMail program directory and run pconfig.exe.  Select the "Standalone" menu and reset the HOME and NEW mail directory spec to reflect the current location.  This is usually something like c:\pmail\mail \~8 where c:\pmail\mail is the location of the pmail.usr file and the ~8 represents the users mailbox names.  If yuo are running from a server from remote location then this should be \\server\volume\pmail\mail\~8 so that the remote systems are not looking at the local hard drives for the mail.

 [/quote]

 
My luck that I got the 0,1%: pconfig showed correct specs. Changing names in the actual location and in the pconfic also did not help.

Thanks anyway for the quick reply. At least I learned something new, did not know about the pconfig.exe 

Mcduff 

[/quote]

How about giving us the entry in the pconfig.exe location and the actual location of the files.  Here's what Mine shows where the files are located on a system called tstephenson and the volume is shared as c_drive.  Any time you get an error that the user cannot be found then either the user does not exist in the pmail.usr file or the mail directory cannot be found.  If you are sure that the user exists then the specified path to the pmail.usr file and the mailbox directories is incorrect.  This could also mean I guess that you do not have any rights to read/write files in the directory path as well.

──────────────── Standalone Configuration ─────────────────

 Home mailbox :    [\\tstephenson\c_drive\pmail\mail\~n  ]
 New mailbox  :     \\tstephenson\c_drive\pmail\mail\~n
 Asynch gateway? :  N


 Where your mail folders, address books, distribution
 lists and other associated mail files should be stored.

When people run WinPMail from the z:\pmail drive the system goes out to the server to find the mail. 
 

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]

How about giving us the entry in the pconfig.exe location and the actual location of the files. ....

[/quote]

Probably you are right about the path settings but I do not understand why our setup worked before and on other computers, but not on this computer anymore.  

This is what I tried. Again uninstalled, cleaned including registry, and reinstalled. This time I used all standard options, that is, let pmail pre-arrange an admin mailbox and keep the mailboxes in the same folder as the program. Then added a new user "robert" with admin rights and copied all the old files back. Went out of pmail, restarted pmail with "robert" as user. Everything worked like it should. Great. 

Uninstalled, cleaned, reinstalled, this time how we normally do it, that is, no prearranged mail box, for the rest standard pre-selection including roam option checked. This is how it looks now:

program runs in c:\program files\pmail\programs\...

actual mail box location: D:\80_PMAIL\MAIL\robert    whereas D:\ is a partition of the main hard drive

pconfig data: standalone configuration

                       Home mailbox :    [D:\80_PMAIL\MAIL\~8  ]
                       New mailbox  :      D:\80_PMAIL\MAIL\~8
                       Asynch gateway? :  N

 pegasus mail entries in registry have the same mailbox, new mail, and username specs.

 pmail.usr file has A;robert;fullname

pmail.ini has correct specs as well.

I have full administrator rights (although some years ago on another computer Windows messed that up) 

 
Leaving pmail, restart pmail, enter username "robert"...... and again "no such user" 

So I can make it work by letting pmail decide everything, but I like to understand why I cannot make it work like it used to be.  

[quote user="mcduff"][quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]

How about giving us the entry in the pconfig.exe location and the actual location of the files. ....

[/quote]

Probably you are right about the path settings but I do not understand why our setup worked before and on other computers, but not on this computer anymore.  

 Hard to say since the system is really saying I can't find that drive and directory.
 

This is what I tried. Again uninstalled, cleaned including registry, and reinstalled. This time I used all standard options, that is, let pmail pre-arrange an admin mailbox and keep the mailboxes in the same folder as the program. Then added a new user "robert" with admin rights and copied all the old files back. Went out of pmail, restarted pmail with "robert" as user. Everything worked like it should. Great. 

I hope you are NOT copying back the pmail.ini, pmail.cfg files.
 

Uninstalled, cleaned, reinstalled, this time how we normally do it, that is, no prearranged mail box, for the rest standard pre-selection including roam option checked. This is how it looks now:

program runs in c:\program files\pmail\programs\...

actual mail box location: D:\80_PMAIL\MAIL\robert    whereas D:\ is a partition of the main hard drive

Ok, typical. 

pconfig data: standalone configuration

                       Home mailbox :    [D:\80_PMAIL\MAIL\~8  ]
                       New mailbox  :      D:\80_PMAIL\MAIL\~8
                       Asynch gateway? :  N

 pegasus mail entries in registry have the same mailbox, new mail, and username specs.

What's in registry is not material, it's not really used by the program at all.

 pmail.usr file has A;robert;fullname

pmail.ini has correct specs as well.

I have full administrator rights (although some years ago on another computer Windows messed that up)
 
Leaving pmail, restart pmail, enter username "robert"...... and again "no such user" 

Again, I'm not sure what's happening but I can tell you what the program is saying to you is that it does not find the pmail.usr file and also can't find the directory D:\80_PMAIL\MAIL\robert.  This is either because the program does not have the rights to find and view the directory or the directory does not exist.  Did you go back to the c:\program files\pmail\programs and run pconfig.exe to verify that it was still pointing to D:\80_PMAIL\MAIL\~8.  When you open "My computer" can you go to this directory and view the files?

So I can make it work by letting pmail decide everything, but I like to understand why I cannot make it work like it used to be.  

Something is set incorrectly, what I can't tell you but the program simply looks at the pmail.cfg file, reads the path information.  If it finds a ~8 (or ~n) it queries for the username when there is more than one user.  Once it gets the path and user name it looks for the pmail.usr file to see if the user exists and then goes to the specified directory to real the pmail.ini file.  If you get a user not found then the program is either looking at the wrong drive/directory or can't actually read/write in this directory.