Hello,

An associate of mine lost his inbox after his PC crashed.  He uses
Netscape 7 on Windows XP.  I found the inbox file which is 200MB, so I
assume it's all still there, but the emails don't show up in the
inbox.

I've copied both the inbox and inbox.msf files as a backup.  I tried
deleting inbox.msf to rebuild it- didn't work.  I've checked to see if
it's set on "view all messages"- it is.  Please help!

Thanks,

Ed

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Request for Question Clarification by mmastrac-ga on 10 May 2004 20:04 PDT

If you open the inbox with notepad, do all of the messages appear?

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Clarification of Question by esarkissian-ga on 11 May 2004 10:42 PDT

I can't really tell.... the inbox is over 200MB so notepad just hangs
when I try to open it.  (need to implement archiving once this gets
fixed)

I tried creating a new Netscape profile and transferring the old inbox
over.  When I opened the inbox it was busy for a while, with the
hard-drive light on, but eventually it brought up nothing- only the
one introductory email.

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Request for Question Clarification by mmastrac-ga on 11 May 2004 11:41 PDT

One way to see the contents of the inbox is to use the command prompt,
"cd" to the appropriate directory and enter the command:

type inbox | more

You should see a number of raw messages there if the inbox has not
been corrupted beyond repair.

This will work no matter what the size of the INBOX is.

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Clarification of Question by esarkissian-ga on 11 May 2004 12:19 PDT

Yep, I can see emails from February.  Next step?

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Request for Question Clarification by mmastrac-ga on 11 May 2004 12:53 PDT

Okay - time to recover your mbox.  You've got the right technique -
create a new profile and copy your old INBOX over the new profile's
INBOX, but the file is likely corrupt.

To recover it, you'll need a command-line utility called "formail".  Get this from:

http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gnu-win32/release/procmail/procmail-3.22-8.tar.bz2

You'll need to decompress this file using the WinRAR demo version,
since WinZIP won't support a .tar.bz2 file (once you're done with the
process, you can always uninstall the WinRAR demo).  You can get the
demo of WinRAR from:

http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar330.exe

Now, use WinRAR to open the .tar.bz2 file by double-clicking the
.tar.bz2 file.  It should now show a single ".tar" file.  Open the
.tar file and navigate through to the usr/bin directory.  In this
directory with be a file called "formail.exe".  Decompress this file
to your C:\temp directory.

Copy your corrupted inbox file to the temp directory.  Run the
following from the command prompt:

C:\temp>formail -ds < inbox > inbox2

"inbox2" should now contain a fixed mbox-style mailbox.  Copy it to a
new Netscape7 profile's Mail directory as inbox2 and it should appear
as a new folder when you fire up the mail client and contain all the
recoverable messages.

You should compare the filesize of inbox and inbox2 to see if there
was a significant amount of corruption.  With any luck, it should be
roughly the same size.

Please let me know if you need clarification of any step within this
process, or if something does not work as I have described.

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Request for Question Clarification by mmastrac-ga on 11 May 2004 13:00 PDT

Sorry esarkissian-ga, one correction.  Use the following command line
to recover the mbox file:

C:\Temp>formail -dbs < inbox > inbox2

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Clarification of Question by esarkissian-ga on 12 May 2004 13:37 PDT

mmastrac-ga,

When I do the command line portion I get an error for formail.exe.  It
says it failed to start because it's missing cygwin1.dll and
reinstalling may fix it.  I reinstalled, even re-downloaded and it
didn't fix it.  Another suggestion/download location?

Thanks.

Ed

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Request for Question Clarification by mmastrac-ga on 12 May 2004 14:48 PDT

Sorry!  I didn't realize that the executable required external DLLs
(which were already present on my machine).

To obtain cygwin1.dll, download the following .zip file.  Place the
.DLL in the same directory as "formail.exe":

http://www2.mikro.biologie.tu-muenchen.de/rs/soft/download/CygWinDll.zip

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Clarification of Question by esarkissian-ga on 12 May 2004 16:15 PDT

Ok, now I get another error:

formail.exe    Entry Point Not Found

The procedure entry point __getreent could not be located in the
dynamic link library cygwin1.dll.

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Request for Question Clarification by mmastrac-ga on 12 May 2004 17:35 PDT

Hrm...  I will need to locate the correct version of the DLL for you. 
The documentation for this tool is very poor.  Sorry for the
inconvenience!

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Request for Question Clarification by mmastrac-ga on 12 May 2004 18:01 PDT

I've managed to isolate the DLL you need from the computer I have
formail.exe running on and archived it for you.  You can grab it at:

http://www.grack.com/downloads/misc/cygwin/cygwin1.zip

Please replace the cygwin1.dll you downloaded earlier with this one.

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Clarification of Question by esarkissian-ga on 13 May 2004 16:04 PDT

mmastrac-ga, it worked!  Inbox2 is roughly the same size so doesn't
look like too much was lost.  A lot of straaange emails though, so I'm
wondering if a virus had anything to do with it.  But nonetheless, it
worked.  Post and you shall receive!

Ed

As described in the clarifications above, formail.exe can be used to
recover a crashed Netscape 7 inbox.

The strange emails could be related to the hard-drive corruption.  If
blocks of the inbox were destroyed, it may appear as a message with
corrupted headers (though formail.exe will recover as much as
possible).

Regards and good luck!
mmastrac-ga

Thanks for your help and persistence, mmastrac-ga.

ed

Hi esarkissian,

You could try this:

Recovering Lost Email Messages in Netscape 6.2.1

Q. I've got the following problem - I've recently installed NS 6.2.1,
and for two times it crashed during downloading new e-mails. The
results in both cases are that the MSF files were damaged, and I
cannot see the messages, even though they are in the INBOX file. Of
course, I can read it in the INBOX with a text reader, but it is very
confusing that all messages are gone (and I had more than a thousand
in my INBOX, some of them very important). Do you have any idea how
can I fix this, converting the INBOX file or something similar.

A. First the good news. I have it on good authority (fly on the wall)
that these types of problems are going to be addressed in the next NS
release. Netscape 6.x versions, collect them all, impress your
friends.

Now for your problem:
Using Windows Explorer, (Explorer.exe) go into your profile folder
[1]. Usually it can be found in:

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla

There, you should find the mail | mail server folder delete all *.msf files.

Since we have so many people using so many different operating systems
(all of which have different names for the folders in their paths),
probably the easiest way to address this *.msf* issue is to click on
Start / Find / Files or Folders and enter *.msf and all drives. The
*.msf files can then be deleted in the resultant search window, with
no need to know or memorize the specific path.

This should solve the problem. Relegating the *.msf* files to the
recycle bin will allow you to recover them if something should go
amiss. Be sure to delete any files in the recycle bin you do not
believe you will need to restore before sending the *.msf* files into
it. This will ensure that you will have enough disk space to recover
them if necessary. You really shouldn't have to recover them but I
always choose to do things on the side of caution.
http://www.uninets.net/~blaisdel/netscapeaid2.htm#RecoverLostMessages

Regards,
hummer

Thanks for the suggestion Hummer.  Unfortunately, it didn't work.  ;) 
Deleting the .msf file was one of the first things I tried, hoping it
would rebuild the inbox.  It goes through all the motions, hard-drive
whirring, etc. but no emails pop up.

Ed