I came here to report a similar problem.. However, I AM using Windows XP (Home Edition), and I've noticed the problem for a long, long time now.
At first, I figured it was just glitch, until it happened several times. Then I figured it was a bug in PMail or more likely, the Windows Memory Subsystem (PMail isn't the only program that seems to have suddenly zero data problems under Windows, but it does seem to happen more often in PMail..) Either of which would receive a fix or update pretty quickly (they usually do if the problem is a common/widespread bug; And if it's not a common/widespread problem, it's more likely something with my specific machine and not a bug.) But when the problem continued, I started keeping note of the when and what effects, etc.
I have made the following observations over time:
* The problem almost always occurs in conjunction with mail filtering rules which move or modify the message and/or it's status flags/codes. At one time, I had a new mail rule which added a dummy header to every mail, so a Perl script I wrote could process the mail externally and edit the dummy header without corrupting the PMail files/indexes. Then I got mailflooded by a spammer, and noticed when processing a large number of messages (over 1000!), EVERY single mail being processed became totally blank; Headers and body both got nixed. This was prior to any processing by my Perl script--I noticed it because my Perl script was smart enough to realize something was wrong, panic, abort everything and give me a "ARGH! SOMETHING SERIOUSLY @%$#ED UP! ABORTING!" messagebox (All programmers do this, don't they!? ;-))
* It seems to happen more often with new mail (where every new message is a file in the users mail directory), and almost never in other mailboxes (where the mail is a single indexed file of messages.)
* Tonight, it happened again; Only this time, I did not have any rules filters other than a simple one that moved everything from the new mail folder to a "waiting to be filtered" folder. (I rewrote my Perl script after my first fiasco so it would download my mail itself, do it's own processing and archive the original, then fake being a POP3 server to "feed" the mail to PMail for reading/further processing.) My filtering folder is then set up so I can go thru, pick out the mail I want to read now, then the filters kick in when I close the mailbox to process, sort and filter the remaining mail. At any rate, the problem this time was strange; After moving new mail to my processing folder, but before I did anything to activate the filtering rules, I noticed that all my messages were blank, with To, From, Subject, Date, etc all showing "???" in the preview. Oddly, the message index/list still showed all the information, only the preview pane showed the "???"s. (My previous experience, both panes showed "???"s.) Another difference this time, when I shut down PMail and restarted it, everything was fine and dandy. Not a single message was lost or blank. So whatever the problem, it was only in whatever was in memory--the files seemed unaffected.
It would seem that somewhere along the line of message handling, and most likely only while in memory, something gets corrupted and a message is lost/blanked. As long as nothing causes PMail to write/modify/delete any files with the message(s), they'll be safe. (I.E.: when moving a message, it must write the message to the new location, then delete it from the old location. But if it's losing the message in transit thru memory and writing a blank message to the new location, then deleting the original location, it ends up with a blank message.)
All-in-all, though, since it seems (from reading this site's blogs and stuff) that PMail is being heavily re-written for v5, this whole issue may become moot with the next release. I'm still not even sure if it's truly a PMail issue, or something within the Windows' core that's causing the problem (it does seem odd that I started noticing this problem about 4-5 months ago.. But I'd not changed or updated PMail for almost a year..). I would definitely suggest the next version of PMail add a couple "sanity" checks, such as verifying the message was written correctly at the new location before purging/deleting the old location, or other similar checks anytime a message is written or purged. Maybe even an option to turn them on/off, if performance and speed overhead of the extra checks become an issue.
BTW, to the O.P.: I would suggest you do something like I've done. You can install Mercury and have it pull all your Internet mail to a local folder, do additional processing and filtering with Mercury's abilities, and even save an archived copy of the original before doing anything else (so you'll have it just in case something goes wrong). Then you can have PMail connect to Mercury to "download" your mail for reading. The setup possibilities between PMail and Mercury are almost limitless (that is one of the main reasons I've used, promoted and advocated PMail almost since it was first released!)
C. M.
I came here to report a similar problem.. However, I AM using Windows XP (Home Edition), and I've noticed the problem for a long, long time now.
At first, I figured it was just glitch, until it happened several times. Then I figured it was a bug in PMail or more likely, the Windows Memory Subsystem (PMail isn't the only program that seems to have suddenly zero data problems under Windows, but it does seem to happen more often in PMail..) Either of which would receive a fix or update pretty quickly (they usually do if the problem is a common/widespread bug; And if it's not a common/widespread problem, it's more likely something with my specific machine and not a bug.) But when the problem continued, I started keeping note of the when and what effects, etc.
I have made the following observations over time:
* The problem almost always occurs in conjunction with mail filtering rules which move or modify the message and/or it's status flags/codes. At one time, I had a new mail rule which added a dummy header to every mail, so a Perl script I wrote could process the mail externally and edit the dummy header without corrupting the PMail files/indexes. Then I got mailflooded by a spammer, and noticed when processing a large number of messages (over 1000!), EVERY single mail being processed became totally blank; Headers and body both got nixed. This was prior to any processing by my Perl script--I noticed it because my Perl script was smart enough to realize something was wrong, panic, abort everything and give me a "ARGH! SOMETHING SERIOUSLY @%$#ED UP! ABORTING!" messagebox (All programmers do this, don't they!? ;-))
* It seems to happen more often with new mail (where every new message is a file in the users mail directory), and almost never in other mailboxes (where the mail is a single indexed file of messages.)
* Tonight, it happened again; Only this time, I did not have any rules filters other than a simple one that moved everything from the new mail folder to a "waiting to be filtered" folder. (I rewrote my Perl script after my first fiasco so it would download my mail itself, do it's own processing and archive the original, then fake being a POP3 server to "feed" the mail to PMail for reading/further processing.) My filtering folder is then set up so I can go thru, pick out the mail I want to read now, then the filters kick in when I close the mailbox to process, sort and filter the remaining mail. At any rate, the problem this time was strange; After moving new mail to my processing folder, but before I did anything to activate the filtering rules, I noticed that all my messages were blank, with To, From, Subject, Date, etc all showing "???" in the preview. Oddly, the message index/list still showed all the information, only the preview pane showed the "???"s. (My previous experience, both panes showed "???"s.) Another difference this time, when I shut down PMail and restarted it, everything was fine and dandy. Not a single message was lost or blank. So whatever the problem, it was only in whatever was in memory--the files seemed unaffected.
It would seem that somewhere along the line of message handling, and most likely only while in memory, something gets corrupted and a message is lost/blanked. As long as nothing causes PMail to write/modify/delete any files with the message(s), they'll be safe. (I.E.: when moving a message, it must write the message to the new location, then delete it from the old location. But if it's losing the message in transit thru memory and writing a blank message to the new location, then deleting the original location, it ends up with a blank message.)
All-in-all, though, since it seems (from reading this site's blogs and stuff) that PMail is being heavily re-written for v5, this whole issue may become moot with the next release. I'm still not even sure if it's truly a PMail issue, or something within the Windows' core that's causing the problem (it does seem odd that I started noticing this problem about 4-5 months ago.. But I'd not changed or updated PMail for almost a year..). I would definitely suggest the next version of PMail add a couple "sanity" checks, such as verifying the message was written correctly at the new location before purging/deleting the old location, or other similar checks anytime a message is written or purged. Maybe even an option to turn them on/off, if performance and speed overhead of the extra checks become an issue.
BTW, to the O.P.: I would suggest you do something like I've done. You can install Mercury and have it pull all your Internet mail to a local folder, do additional processing and filtering with Mercury's abilities, and even save an archived copy of the original before doing anything else (so you'll have it just in case something goes wrong). Then you can have PMail connect to Mercury to "download" your mail for reading. The setup possibilities between PMail and Mercury are almost limitless (that is one of the main reasons I've used, promoted and advocated PMail almost since it was first released!)
C. M.
