Greetings all, Well, I have experienced what appears to be my first catastrophic DB failure in my several years of using PowerMail.
At first, I noticed that PM was raising "database errors" when attempting to view some older messages. Thinking nothing of this, I decided to do a low-level rebuild, which has been successful for me in the past. First, I decided to empty my trash and compact the database for good measure. That was probably a mistake, because after doing so, PM balked with a dialog: "A database error occurred: DB file is corrupted." It would not load up as usual; it gives the same error message when attempting to do a low-level rebuild. I have tried all manner of combination of the first- aid checkboxes, and continue to receive same. At this point, in order to compose this message, I've created a new user environment to start from scratch, at least in the interim. (In order to do this, I was forced to DELETE all of my previous PowerMail environment, since PM kept choking with the DB error and never giving me a chance to select or create a different user environment. I thought we used to be able to hold down Command when launching, in order to get such a choice? It does not appear to work anymore. Before deleting my old environment, I stuffed into a .sit archive, and copied to another machine for good measure.) This is a SEVERE bummer for me, if I am unable to recover. Fortunately my last backup is only about a week and a half old, but at the pace of business, that's still way too long. (I now realise I ought to back up more frequently than that) So... what's the deal here? How can I recover from this; does anyone have any ideas? Even if I am able to extract messages from the database in raw format, that is better than nothing. I am slightly agape at the total inutility of the low-level rebuild to do ANYTHING with my database. What do the "class/what/when/err" values in the error dialog mean; are they helpful at all to CTM? -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca
