And now I'm reading through the "But read this first!" material that I didn't read first.
Everyone is suppose to read, follow, and understand All the instructions first Before you begin <vbg>
iaf exports are the least of your problem now.. (and yes in some situations you can use them, but I'm not going to detail that here, best to always use the Backup / Restore 1, 2, 3 procedure by miles far!)
..and btw, there is no way in hel* that the Tutorial instructions here resemble that over at the SevenForums WinMail tutorial.
This is a whole different game to play now. Most people give up... and I understand why.
I have daily full backups.
Not the same thing as the Backup / Restore Procedures 1, 2, 3 outlined here. Unless, you are making partition image backups, then you can mount and extract out of those what you need, if, you know when your WinMail Setup first got MSF corrupted and you can pre-date that moment with your partition image, but you will still lose all messages after that, without having previously made a "current" 1, 2, 3 backup first.
They show up in the same folder as the original copy. There is no obvious "recovery process" -- WInMail just closes and reopens.
All the evidence is there if you know where to look, but for this part no I don't at all expect for regular people to know that at all. irrelevant to the whole process anyway, and would only be for the adept if interested.
Interim updates happened first. Started mid-year. My wife told me about it a month ago, but I gather it had been going on for a while. Both machines were clean installs
Both machines are set to a normal WIndows update cycle.
And herein lies the problem, and is the the end-game answer to all my questions now. I see what has happened and why your MSF got corrupted and is exactly as I warned throughout the entire tutorial. I even explained it in the very step 1 of the tutorial!... please go see and read it now, step 1 ...what that will happen when you let it do an update without preparedness.
Please everyone understand if you let an upgrade happen it will do exactly what it has done to here, corrupt the MSF completely. The resolve to fix it, and the resolve to Prevent it from happening again, you would of needed to follow the instructions first, simple as that. Also, don't forget to read the bottom part of post #5 as well how to put WU on hold, till your ready.
So, the answer casey is very clear what happened. If you want just take the time to read and understand everything again first, and you will find what you have to do next now to fix it, at this Last Resort moment. (hint, search Last Resort within Post 1)
You just may throw up your hands and say forget it, and that's fine too. It's everyone's own decision.
It does not matter if you are Bill Gates or his main Developer back then or now, when it comes to these simple but tedious WinMail tutorial instructions, and in order to stay out of WinMail conflict and MSF corruptions, and keep your WinMail program going throughout every update going forward, requires simple diligence.
I think people don't realize this at first, no matter how much I try and explain, some seem to just skim read things and think that's good enough. I've tried my best, so hard I did, but maybe it's time I close this project down if someone with your professional background skims the tutorial and slims down what's done, and thus WinMail breaks, and then wonders why - when it's all explained already. I'm growing weary of repeating myself every few posts for the last so many years ):
It's really so easy for those that take the time to get it to keep WinMail going.
