Re: Sorry if you crashed (W95 FYI: Chaos in 2038!)

Gayle and All,

Here's how to get Netscape Mail back: Access the directory where your
Netscape Mail mailboxes reside, then delete the file "inbox" (not the
file inbox.snm). Then fire up Netscape and Netscape mail. Netscape mail
will automatically create a new inbox text file.

Alternatively, if you've got mail in that crashed inbox that you want to
view or save, open it up first with Notepad or Wordpad. It's a simple
text file and you can view everything that's in it.

You could rename the inbox file to "anyfile.txt" but even if you do, you
should move it out of your Netscape Mail directory. If you don't, it
will appear as a mail folder and crash your Netscape and NS Mail every
time you click on it. The file is corrupt as a Netscape Mail file
('though it's alright as plain ASCII text).

I finally figured this out after my NS Mail crashed for the fifth or
sixth time, ruining a lot of correspondence I was engaged in. Of course,
there's nothing on this in the Netscape home page tech help files....

I didn't know what was causing the crashes, tho' I did have it narrowed
down to correspondence on this mailing list.

Good Luck,
Allen Miller
_____________________________________


Gayle Kidder wrote:
> 
> So now I know how it happened. Would one of you geniuses tell me what to do
> to get my Netscape mail back? I'm stuck with IE mail at the moment, which
> is not as nice, and several important msgs back in NS mail that I can't get
> to. I tried reinstalling NS but that didn't do it. Do I need to uninstall
> first?
> Any help appreciated....
> G. Kidder
> ----------
> > From: David Perrell <davidp@earthlink.net>
> > To: Style <www-style@w3.org>; HTML <www-html@w3.org>
> > Subject: Sorry if you crashed (W95 FYI: Chaos in 2038!)
> > Date: Friday, November 22, 1996 5:11 PM
> >
> > It was brought to my attention that my posts to these lists have caused
> > Netscape Mail running on Win95 to crash. I tried to test this by
> > sending myself a message but was unable to run NS Mail at all.
> >
> > I'm glad to say I found the problem: In the course of a HD upgrade my
> > system clock had somehow built a 100-year bridge to the 21st century
> > and was set to 2096. Subsequent testing shows that dates beyond 2038
> > cause many unwanted side effects in Win95, including the aforementioned
> > crashes when NS Mail receives a message so dated.
> >
> > Having returned to the present, I retrieved my previously sent test
> > message dated 2096, and, sure enough, NS Mail crashed.
> >
> > Sorry if anyone experienced this problem. It was not intentional.
> >
> > (Also sorry that I rewrote/resent a 'transparent text' post on
> > www-style. I thought one of these crashes had trashed the message.)
> >
> > David Perrell
> >

Received on Saturday, 23 November 1996 14:31:35 UTC