OE6.0 compact question
 

"Ken A" nospaml@nospamnet wrote in message
...
I also just had this happen. I came to the newsgroup to ask the same
question you did. Glad to see the answer even before I ask the question.

Ken A.


"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...
Thanks. I had no idea what was going on :-)
DH


"Alias" wrote in message
...
Dudley Henriques wrote:
I compact folders each night manually in OE and have never had any
issues with this procedure. The folders compress and that's it.
Just tonight, OE started copying all the dbx files to the recycle bin
as I manually compress. They show up there with a BAK extension.
Can anyone shed any light on this for me. I don't think I've changed
any settings and this has never happened before.
If possible I need to know what's happening and why and how to correct
it if it's an issue please.
Thank you
Dudley Henriques

It's an update from Windows Update. Now, when you compact, OE sets the
count back to zero and backs up your messages and puts them in the
recycle bin. It's normal and about time they released it. I've had it
for months. If, after a reboot, your OE hasn't lost any messages, you
can delete the items in the recycle bin.

Alias

OE6.0 compact question
 

You trying to say something, Mary?

"Mary Roberson" wrote:
"PA Bear" wrote in message
...

OE6.0 compact question
 

Please don't feed the trolls.

XRaySpeX wrote:
You trying to say something, Mary?

"Mary Roberson" wrote:

OE6.0 compact question
 

"PA Bear" wrote in message
...
Thanks, & BTW, congrats on your MVP award.


Hello Dudley
I would like to add my 'well done' to your award.
Rgds
Antioch

OE6.0 compact question
 

Hi Heather,

Hope you have happy holidays also.

I've got a 20 pounder now. You don't want a similar picture of him. G

cheers,

steve

"Heather" wrote in message
...
Hi Little Stevie Wonder!!

Thank goodness I read thru the posts. I just discovered 550 meg of backed
up OE stuff in my Delete Bin and wondered what in h*ll was going on. I
had removed IE7 (ptui!!) a few days ago and thought that was the culprit.

NO.....MS in its infinite wisdom has seen fit to spring yet another
surprise on us without mentioning what will happen. (VBG)

OK....now I will go and delete all of these *.bak files now that I see you
guys are OK with that......I think. I will await your approval, Sir
Stevie.

And will also clean out the excess **** from my Inbox and Outbox (PA Bear
knows I am bad with that, grin).

Merry Christmas to all of the MVP's on here that I have known for a decade
(almost). Elayne and I still laugh at what she did to your cat way back
when, Steve. (eyeball)

Cheers....Heather/Figgs
"Steve Cochran" wrote in message
...
Hi Dudley,

Its a new patch to protect the message store when compacting. See
www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#2

steve

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...
I compact folders each night manually in OE and have never had any issues
with this procedure. The folders compress and that's it.
Just tonight, OE started copying all the dbx files to the recycle bin as
I manually compress. They show up there with a BAK extension.
Can anyone shed any light on this for me. I don't think I've changed any
settings and this has never happened before.
If possible I need to know what's happening and why and how to correct
it if it's an issue please.
Thank you
Dudley Henriques

OE6.0 compact question
 

Well, let me paste in here what I said in the other NG. You would be more
teed off if you have lost all your messages during compaction.

Here's what I posted earlier:

Let me briefly enter into this thread after reading the whole thing and give
you a little background so you understand why things were done this way.

1. Background: Since OE5 was introduced with the dbx file structure (ca
1998) there have been innumerable instances where users have lost their
messages unexpectedly. It became apparent to those of us in the newsgroups
that this was likely due to two major issues. One was OE triggering
compaction of its folders in the background that grabbed 100% of the CPU and
slowed down the computer. Users would endtask OE to stop this or the
computer might shut down in the process and messages were lost. The other
issue was antivirus software interfering with OE and destroying the users'
messages. Both issues still prevail. See www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx and #2
and #3

Our mantra became "Turn off background compaction under Tools | Optionts |
Maintenance, and compact manually and frequently using File | Folder |
Compact all". I must have typed that sentence 100,000 times before I
finally put it up on the website. Microsoft refused to accept that this was
a problem for several years until they introduced error reporting and
figured out that compaction caused users to lose messages.

So finally in XP (maybe it was SP1) they stopped background compaction and
set OE to prompt the user to compact after 100 closings of OE.
Unfortunately this wasn't implemented very well and the compaction process
sometimes was interrupted via computer shutdowns as well as the fact that it
has intrinsic issues that result in message loss. The function is flaky and
sometimes fails and the results is that the user opens up OE and huge chunks
of messages or all messages are lost. The only chance of recovery in such
circumstances is my DBXpress program that will pull OE messages off the disk
clusters.

This has been a HUGE issue over the years. Before I made my DBXtract
program $5, I was getting 4000 downloads a month of it over a period of over
2 years.


2. The "resolution": So what has been done is a stopgap measure to prevent
the loss of messages during compaction. The dbx format and its accompanying
code is old. Retooling the compaction process was not an option, as MS has
changed the message store format (finally) in Vista. So getting them to
re-write legacy OE code is not likely to happen. So this new feature was
the easiest method that would result in protection of the message store
prior to compaction.

While it may annoy users such as yourself that don't want the additional
backup, it will help thousands of users from experiencing the agony of
message loss. Sure they should have made backups of important messages, and
we tell them that over and over again ("what if your hard drive fails?"),
but you can't not feel sorry for a grandmother that lost all of her
genealogical messages for 4 years or the family that lost all their messages
and pictures from their soldier son in Iraq -- just because OE hiccuped and
they didn't have backups.

I agree that it would be good to have a way to turn it off, and maybe they
will agree to this, and for sure its not the ideal programming option, but
hopefully it will prevent the tragedy that many are experiencing from the
flawed compaction process.

Oh, and as to your #2 down there, what if the compaction screwed up a file
and the user compacts again? Then that file would get overwritten by a
corrupt version, and that would defeat the purpose.

cheers,

steve

MS-MVP
Outlook Express / Windows Mail

"Doug" stand@attention wrote in message
...
XRaySpeX: That's okay...I uninstalled the damned patch. Gawd, they tee me
off.

Doug W.

"XRaySpeX" wrote in message
...
I totally agree with you, Doug; it's pure stupidity! It's a complete
unexpected change of functionality. The whole purpose of Compaction is to
save space; instead M/Soft has done the contradictory action and consumed
yet
more space by copying the whole of OE's message store rather than just
freeing up the unused space within it. Furthermore, they have multiplied
the
waste by saving yet another copy of the whole store FOR EACH TIME you
Compact.

They should have made this action optional by adding a parameter in OE's
Options or at least the Registry. At the very least, they should have
removed
the previous set of .bak files in the Recycle Bin when they back up for
the
latest Compaction, so as not to proliferate the problem.

"Doug" wrote:
Alias: One of the goofiest schemes that Microsoft has come up
with in a while. What on earth has happened?...these guys are
nuts. Filling up my computer with a whole bunch of useless
backups which I didn't want or ask for is just plain dumb.

I know, the MVPs will say...well if you don't like the patch,
then uninstall it. I say, if they are going to re-program OE or
patch it, then do it correctly, not with stupid easy routines
that don't really correct things but just mask them or give you
an out if things go wrong.

In the meantime, put up with this BS, and for gawds sake don't
complain...as it will do no good.