recovering old mail and settings

I have a client who was using Netscape on win98 on a P550. The p550 died, but the hard drive is good, so I took him to Best Buy and got him a new pc. I then dumped the entire contents of the old drive to his new 160 Gb drive.

I'm trying to get his old Netscape info on his new pc - profile, mail, address book, etc. I'm an absolute Netscacpe newbie. I know what I want to do.

(Maybe I should use a little Microsoft-speak here. If it were Outlook, I would import, point to the .pst file, pick all sub-folders, and everything would be imported.)

Is it possible to point to the data files, say import, and everything magically comes in? I have tried the import features, and don't know if its Communicator, or what else.

I found c:\program files\netscape\users\davida\mail (I think that's right, it's from memory...) What files do I need to pull in all of his old mail, and all of his old address book contacts? What procedure do I use? I got his Netscape 7.1 working with two accounts last night, and he currrently has new mail only in those two accounts.

I have read some of the other posts, and only am more confused.

Do I:

archive his current mail, copy the old files in place, and import the new mail back into the "old" files?

keep his current mail, and import the old mail and settings in?

stick the old drive in another box, export everything to some agreeable format, put the old drive in the new box, and then import?

start over?

HOW do I do this?

I don't know what version of Netscape he was previously running, and I can't get the old box to come up. I could stick the old drive in another box, and boot to it, and manipulate the old files that way, if it would be profitable.

Please advise.

Rob Pettrey

 

Rob,

First of all, welcome to the board! Sounds like your client has Communicator version 4.x. Did the client have more then one Profile set up in his Netscape? Did you install Netscape again for him?

If it was me, I would install a new Netscape program for him. Make sure that it is version 4.x. I use 4.79 and it is really stable for me. Once the program is installed, create the same profile names that he used before. Once they are created, close Netscape and copy the profile (from the location you gave) and he should have all his info back.

Mike