Lost Email in Netscape 7.0

While compacting all mail folders recently on April 9, Using windows 98 and Netscape 7.0:

After compacting, ALL emails were missing from the "Inbox ", "Drafts" and "Sent" folders. The empty folders all remain, but all old emails are missing. (And are not in the Trash Bin.)

Since then, all NEW emails have stored ok in these three folders.

I use AVG Antivirus, updated daily, and no indication of a virus has been seen at any time which could account for this.

 

Welcome to the Forum, pengunman!

pengunman,

Compacting folders shouldn't cause messages to disappear. Look here for your messages:
C:\Windows\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\profile_name\*.slt\Mail\pop.isp_name.net

Also check the "Local directory" setting in:
Edit | Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings | Server Settings

Is the path to your Mail Account folder correct?

If you have a backup copy of your Profiles folder, you can replace the messages from the backup.

 

Email Still Lost

Yes, thanks Ramona. But this file is the first place I looked for the missing emails. Naturally--I have no backup to Profiles. Yes, I agree, compacting (and no other operation I can think of) should cause emails to totally be deleted. I saw no signs of a power surge (I have a protector). I just hit "compact" and then they were gone after compacting was finished.

My "Local Directory" settings are ok, and have worked perfectly before and after the "disappearance" of the email.

I searched for any other files with ".slt" in them on the whole computer--and there were none.

I also searched for all files on the computer with *mail* in them, as well. No dice.

I would sure appreciate any more ideas. I will now backup any important emails on CD--in the future.

 

The scrambled alphanumeric (as they call it) .slt designation is perfectly normal. It is there for a good reason, and should not be given out, any more than your e-mail address. Since NS6 came out, and with Mozilla and Seamonkey, there have been Profilename|xxxxxx.slt, or "salted" (Ramona lists as *.slt). Firefox, Thunderbird have a slightly different designation (I call it the salt-free designation), i.e. xxxxxx.profilename.
My xxxxxx can be a random combination of letters and numbers.
Now why don't you look directly on your computer Windows Explorer. Win98 does not hide those files, like WinXP does.Don't just search, go for it, using Ramona path as a sample.
Compacting the folders remove any association with any deleted or moved e-mail, so if you moved all the mail to other folders, or deleted mail, you should find nothing in the Inbox or Sent mail (Drafts should have nothing in it, unless you have mail waiting to be sent). Look on the hard drive, and see what you have. You should see pairly of files like Inbox and Inbox.msf, sent and Sent.msf. If you have nothing the files with no extention, should be 0Kb, while the .msf should be 2Kb. Any other number should lead you to delete your .msf (header files). All this with Netscape closed.

 

Email Still Missing!

Thanks, Westside, but I looked manually under all Mozilla\Profiles\* files, and cannot see my missing emails.

Naturally--NONE would be in .msf files, correct?

--Thanks

 

You would not see anything in the .msf files. Those files create the headers which link to the equivalent file with no extention, and allow you to get to the individual messages. If you open your files, like Inbox, Sent, etc. with Wordpad, you should see all the messages in plain text, back to back.
So, are you saying that there is no Inbox, Sent, etc. file in your account folder?
Have you tried a Search for just Inbox, or Sent? Or, for the name of your account? What do you see in your Profiles|profilename|*.slt? Do you see the files

 

Tried Everything

Yes, I have tried looking using all these methods. My Sent, Drafts, and In boxes contain only messages after April 9, when the "emeail destruction" event occurred.

I have searched for all mail files, and all files under my user name, and under "sent ", "drafts ", and "inbox ".

Nothing exists prior to April 9.

--Thanks
pengunman

 

As for as I know, if one of those files is moved, or is deleted, it will be replaced by another, empty file. If you remove an account everything should stay, but when you add back the same account, you will have a new account folder.
So, if you had, originally, a pop.isp.net folder in your Mail, the folder would remain, and you would create a pop.isp-1.net folder when you add back the account. This is what I wanted to know. Do you have just one account folder?
I have no other idea.

 

Nothin'--Nowhere

Dear Westside,

Yes--I actually have (3) pop.isp.net email folders. I have searched the In/sent/Draft subfolders in each of these for the missing messages. The messages aren't anywhere I can find.

The only think I can think of is the email files got corrupted somehow during compacting, and were not stored in the folders...ANY of the folders.

 

If everything is normal, you would have either one account folder per username. I have five accounts with Cox, and I have folders pop.central.cox (-1,-2,-3,-4)
.net. A total of five. Each one has the basic Inbox,Sent, etc. files, all different in size, but otherwise with the same name and their Inbox.msf counterparts. In case I would have only a single account, the oldest would be pop.central.cox.net, and the newest would be pop.central.cox-2.net, if I had three different set ups. Each one would have the same file names, but even if folders were compacted, each one one might have different size file. 0Kb indicates an empty folder, and anything else would have whatever is there.
You say that the messages aren't anywhere. How did you determine that?
You can see what is in each file (with no extention) by rightclicking on the icon, and select to open with Notepad, if only a few, and wordpad, if a lot of messages..
But the key is the size of the file. You should have messages in the latest one. I think that you said that you had messages after April 9, so at least one folder must have some size. I think that we are going around in circles.

 

Already Checked

Dear Westside,

I already checked all mail folders in all (3) of my pop files using Wordpad. Many had "0" bytes in them, but my newest pop files had all emails since April 9, like they should have.

This is a mystery to me how a "compacting" operation could cause stored emails to totally disappear, unless some kind of Trojan activated and gave the command to "delete" emails and empty the trashbin....But my antivirus shows no such event.

Obviously, something happened during compacting which I have not seen before in using versions of Netscape since 1997...