From Steve Grammont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Sun, 14 Nov 2004 01:27:38 -0500 [7.27 CET]
>>That's not what we have been saying. We have been saying we believe >>removing Norton is the first thing to try. If you don't feel that way, >>and are not willing to try our suggestion, our hands are up in the air. > >Well, the suggestion wasn't logical. Not only was it the wrong place to >look first off, I'm not using 10.3.x. I see no evidence that the current >version of Norton is unstable with 10.2.8, which is what I am using. If >I were using 10.3.x *and* PM wasn't a logical place to start, then I'd >think you had a valid point. While I agree that investigating PowerMail is a necessary approach, especially in the long run for its overall stability which influences all of us using it, Hiro and Ben came up with suggestions for you as an end user to eliminate your immediate problems with PowerMail. The suggestion to remove or at least temporarily and partially disable something which can do things with directories, file structures and whatnot _systemwide_ is a very logical suggestion. - Why? - Because just because program "A" crashes it's not necessary its fault. Badly written program "B" might be the culprit by not following programming guidelines etc. Ideally program "A" should be immune of this and should be make more robust, but accusing it for crashing in this context would be like blaming a 90-year old lady with crashing a shop window when a reckless skater bumps into her. Now what is logical and the best approach in this case - blaming the lady or removing the skater from the street, especially as he is known for bumping into people? Since Norton has been suspected for several years (not just since 10.3.x) for messing up databases - and PowerMail uses databases to store its data - it is an understandable suggestion based on many people's experiences who talked about bad Norton behaviour, especially after the introduction of CrashGuard (or what its automated control function is called). But even earlier SpeedDisk which moves around file fragments in order to join them into continuous chunks, rendered people's hard drives useless. Just search in the archives of the "all-macs" list (Yahoo-groups) and you'll find many recommendations to use TechTool or DiskWarrior in stead of Norton. Those who've been using Macs from the earlier days, know the classical approach when crashes occur: look for compatibility problems. Remember old Extension Manager? Disabling files in an effort to hunt down the cause of the problem. And then there are background processes doing their stuff invisible to us while everything seems idle. Checking this, checking that, logging, cashing, swapping files, whatever. Thinking system-wise is wise. Especially if only you or a very few number of people can reproduce your problem, chances are the problem is unique to your system and not the program's. Quite egoistically I'm glad you insist on limiting to scrutinize PowerMail, because this might lead to its improvement, either it solves your problem with another conflicting software - if there is one - or not. Damienn
