Re: OE Is Deleting My NG Headers

Thanks for the helpful note. I don;t think it was any of these. But thanks
for sharing this info!

Neil


"Gerry" <gerry@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O%23xxBEBhJHA.1288@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Neil

Loss of newgroup messages. This can happen if something happens to cause
the folder (file) to corrupt. A power failure could cause corruption if
data was being written to the file and the process was interupted.
Newsgroup folders can get very large so that a system lacking resources in
terms of memory and CPU capacity can have difficulty handling the file. In
this situation the chances of interuption and corruption are greater.
Interupting the automatic compaction process is the most common cause of
file corruption. Normally users report loss of messages from the inbox or
sent items folders. These messages are irreplaceable, whereas messages in
newsgroup folders can easily be replaced. As a consequence loss of
newsgroup messages is not commonly reported.

The delete option when compacting was also a common cause of file
corruption because it could be working when Outlook Express was amongst
other things Online. Compacting was supposed to work in the background
allowing the user to continue to use Outlook Express for reading, writing
and posting messages. It was a disaster. The opportunities for
interupting the compaction process were significantly increased and file
corruption was common until the user of Outlook Express learnt how to
adopt practices to minimise the risk. In the absence of measures from
Microsoft to resolve the problem Steve Cochran, posting in this
conversation, wrote his first message recovery utility, DBXtract, to help
users recover messages from corrupted dbx files. The delete option was
specifically designed to work with Compacting messages in the Background.
You had to select the option to Compact Messages in the Background for the
delete option to work. When Microsoft eventually removed the option to
Compact Messages in the Background they overlooked the delete option and
it became a redundant relic.

Another way to lose newsgroup messages is to unintentionally delete
messages by clicking on the wrong button. In Tools, Options, Maintenance,
CleanUp now are four buttons. One is Compact but the other three buttons
all remove the contents of the selected folder.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Neil wrote:
It does make sense. Apart from differences only available by using
a synchronize command the main thing that you need to be aware of
is the Get 300 headers... option and the fact that its value is
used to do
an automatic Get Next 300... every time you enter a newsgroup when
you are in a Working Online state.

I don't have any problem getting headers. OE gets them for me
automatically when I enter a newsgroup. No problem. And I have it set
to 1,000, not 300. So the Next 1,000 command works fine too. No
problem there. But that has nothing to do with what I'm saying.


If you don't want that to happen,
either don't enter that newsgroup or enter it with Work Offline set.

I do want it to happen. And it's happening. No problem.


If you don't have the Get next 300... option checked the automatic
Get next done for you has the equivalent effect of a Synchronize
Newsgroup command done while the Synchronize settings are
Headers Only.

OK.


And, like I said, didn't used to be that way. I remember a point
where OE would keep downloaded headers indefinitely.


Was this with a different NNTP server? In any case servers change
how they act over time and they may also be set up to serve different
newsgroups differently.

I can't say if it was a different one, or when exactly it changed. I
remember, though, that headers would stay indefinitely, and I had at
least a years' worth of headers in one particular newsgroup. One day
I was playing aroudn with the synchronization settings, and then I
lost all my headers! I was aghast. So I changed it back to No
Synchronization. But ever since then, it kept deleting old headers,
though it never did it before I played around with the
synchronization settings.
But that was on a different PC anyway. This laptop is only about six
months old, and that was a few years ago that it happened. So
anything that happened on that PC wouldn't affect what happens on
this PC (and I didn't bring my message stores over from another PC or
anything). So, even though I can trace the point in time when it
changed to when I changed the synchronization settings (and then
changed back to No Synchronization), that wouldn't explain why it's
happening on this PC, which had a new install of OE.

Neil




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