>Hi > >When I attempted an upgrade from 4.2 to 5.0, all hell broke loose! Upon >starting up, the sort index function started, got to the end, and then the >app quit (5.0). > > I went back and tried to open with 4.2, and the same >thing happens, except I get a dialog box that says " Power Mail Engine >error occured" There are two buttons. the "More Info" yields another >dialog box that says " Class = MAS, what= 1, when=100". Clicking the OK >button DOES NOT clear the dialog box. Meanwhile, I can see my browser >window open, but can't access it since I can't past the endless loop of >the non-working dialog box. It iwas necessary to Force Quit. > >I was able to work around the problem by bypassing the sorting function. >I did that by first trashing the Message database index file within the >PowerMail Files Folder,then opening 4.2 , and then selecting the >PowerMail Files Folder ( which still had the Message databse file but not >the Message database index file). BUT, any attempt at using the sorting >function takes me through the process , sorting 15,000 messages, and then >at the very end I get the above problem again. > >What's wrong and what can I do? >
Hi Rick - while not exactly the same problem - I had a similar problem trying to upgrade my wife's powermail - it would start up, go through sorting and then hang, if I waited long enough, powermail would eventually crash, but usually I had to force quit. Since you saved your old files and you were able to go back to 4.2, first try starting up powermail 4.2 with both the apple and alt keys down - then click all the boxes to rebuild the database files, and disable all indexing. That might be enough to repair any damage and let you upgrade. But in my wife's case, this still did not let us upgrade - apparently there were still corrupt messages in her database file still that screwed up PM5 - and when building the sort index, it choked on these messages. You have to find them and get rid of them, which can only be done by tedious trial and error. To shorten the time to do this, I used PowerMail salvage (google search to find it - unfortunately it costs money - it would be nice if CTM bought the rights to this and bundled it with the next paid release ...), and was able to rescue most. I was able to then find the real culprits by going through her messages in Powermail 4.2, deleting all the good messages that Powermail Salvage rescued - leaving about 10 or 20 messages in her case, and then going through these one by one until trying to open them crashed powermail. I then exported all the good messages to a powermail exchange file (there were 2 or 3 bad ones, fortunately not important). I did all this in Powermail 4.2 - to upgrade, I went into the Mail folder where all the database files are kept, and deleted the Message Database file and the Message Database Index file. Then I started up Powermail 5 anew, which converted all her other files (e.g. address, setup, and server database) OK, and created a blank message database and a new message database index. Then we imported the messages that powermail salvage had rescued, as well as the ones I was able to rescue manually. A bit of a hassle, and time consuming, but in the end she only lost a few messages. Hope this helps, jrh
