Have valuable data in old e-mails I'm trying to retrieve. I've been using 
Netscape 4.x for a few years, never having trouble. But now...

Couldn't get Netscape Communicator 4.x to run. Ditched the prefs file, now it 
runs. But when I try to open Messenger ( Cmd-2 ), NS crashes with Type 2 
error. To be more specfic, the Messenger window opens, but immediately the 
app crashes. (Once, and only once, I got an error message after the Messenger 
window opened, but prior to crashing: It said that Messenger couldn't connect 
to the mail server, probably because I hadn't yet connected a network / DSL 
cable to the iBook. Is this a clue?) 

I've tried booting with extensions off, but this doesn't change the behavior.
I've increased memory for Netscape to 50 MB. No help.
I've tried several different versions of Netscape ( all 4.x ); all crash 
similarly. 
I've tried Opening Messenger while connected to the Internet, and 
disconnected from it; no difference. 
I've thrown away all copies of Talkback, and rebooted. No change. 

Some basic questions:
There aren't any separate prefs for Messenger, are there?
Is Netscape 4.8 compatible with OS 9.1 (although I've been running these 
together for awhile...)?
Is Netscape known to be incompatible with any particular software? 

I'm beginning to think that the Messenger mail box is somehow corrupt. Is 
there some way to repair such a corruption, or to extract mail from this?

(I will upgrade to a newer version of Netscape once I have access to my old 
e-mails; I'm reluctant to confabulate the troubleshooting process here by 
introducing a new version, yet, however.) 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
Snow iBook G3/500; 700MB RAM ( 320 "real" ); Mac OS 9.1; Netscape 4.8

Thanks,
-- 
Dave C.
ddave-usenet3016@mailblocks.com (remove one of the "d"s from the address 
before mailing me. 

DaveC wrote:
> Have valuable data in old e-mails I'm trying to retrieve. I've been using 
> Netscape 4.x for a few years, never having trouble. But now...
> 
> Couldn't get Netscape Communicator 4.x to run. Ditched the prefs file, now it 
> runs. But when I try to open Messenger ( Cmd-2 ), NS crashes with Type 2 
> error. To be more specfic, the Messenger window opens, but immediately the 
> app crashes. (Once, and only once, I got an error message after the Messenger 
> window opened, but prior to crashing: It said that Messenger couldn't connect 
> to the mail server, probably because I hadn't yet connected a network / DSL 
> cable to the iBook. Is this a clue?) 
> 
> I've tried booting with extensions off, but this doesn't change the behavior.
> I've increased memory for Netscape to 50 MB. No help.
> I've tried several different versions of Netscape ( all 4.x ); all crash 
> similarly. 
> I've tried Opening Messenger while connected to the Internet, and 
> disconnected from it; no difference. 
> I've thrown away all copies of Talkback, and rebooted. No change. 
> 
> Some basic questions:
> There aren't any separate prefs for Messenger, are there?
> Is Netscape 4.8 compatible with OS 9.1 (although I've been running these 
> together for awhile...)?
> Is Netscape known to be incompatible with any particular software? 
> 
> I'm beginning to think that the Messenger mail box is somehow corrupt. Is 
> there some way to repair such a corruption, or to extract mail from this?
> 
> (I will upgrade to a newer version of Netscape once I have access to my old 
> e-mails; I'm reluctant to confabulate the troubleshooting process here by 
> introducing a new version, yet, however.) 
> 
> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>  
> Snow iBook G3/500; 700MB RAM ( 320 "real" ); Mac OS 9.1; Netscape 4.8
> 
> Thanks,

I ran NS 4.7 for a long time on a Wallstreet PB with OS 9.1, no 
problems. Now I am using NS 7. I really don't know what the problem 
might be, other than some corruption. Maybe you need to reinstall NS. 
Maybe you ned to do a clean install of the system.

You don't talk about attemps to use the NS User Profile Manager. You can 
use that to edit a profile, or to create a new profile, then simply drag 
your old mail files into the new profile.

A nice thing about NS is that you can easily find the stored mail files 
and open them as text files. Assuming you sinply used the default 
settings when you first set up NS, you will find them in Netscape Users, 
which is inside the Preferences folder, which is inside the System 
folder. Each mail folder is a text file that has all the messages that 
are in that folder. So if you are not able to get NS working again 
(which I think you should be able to), you can still recover the content 
of the mail files.

Of course that means you must not throw away the mail files from the NS 
Users file in the Preferences folder. If you dd that, you have lost the 
messages. Did you keep backups?

Bill