Years Later and Still Getting Missing Posts

[Ali]

I have used many different versions of Outlook Express and now Windows Mail
as my Newsreader, but one problem has never disappeared, which is missing
posts! I have also used numerous ISP's/news servers over the years too.

So, for example, intermittently when I reply to a post, I am unable to see
the reply I have posted, but I will get people responding to my 'invisible'
post (so it is obviously visible to the rest of the world). If I reset the
newsgroup and download again, then I can see the post, but is a pain in the
arse to keep doing this, particularly as you loose your watched posts.

There have been a huge amount of people complaining of this over the years,
but for some bizarre reason, nobody is able to give a decent explanation and
fix. I gave up years ago, but am hoping that since then, there is now an
actual explanation for this phenomenon.

So, the question, years on, does anyone know why this happens?

 

[Bruce Hagen]

I don't know if the settings are the same in Windows Mail, but for Outlook
Express:

While in a newsgroup: View | Current View. Make sure Show All Messages and
Group Messages By Conversation are checked.

Tools | Options | Read. Uncheck: Get XXX headers at a time. Then, right
click on the newsgroup in the Folder Tree | Properties | Local File | Reset.
Switch to another folder and then back and all available messages will be
downloaded again.

Or go to Tools | Options | Maintenance | Clean Up Now and choose the group,
or server at the top and then Reset.

It would be a good idea to compact your folders when you're done.

Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are
open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the
Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything until
the compacting is completed.

My personal preference is to disregard synchronizing and rather have OE
check for news when it checks for mail. Tools | Accounts | News. Check: "
Include this account...........".

 

[Ali]

While in a newsgroup: View | Current View. Make sure Show All Messages and
Group Messages By Conversation are checked.

This is setup as above.

Tools | Options | Read. Uncheck: Get XXX headers at a time. Then, right
click on the newsgroup in the Folder Tree | Properties | Local File |
Reset. Switch to another folder and then back and all available messages
will be downloaded again.

I had it set to get 500 at a time. Although, for example I check an hour
after posting and there is much less than 500 new posts, maybe just 10 new
posts. I will try un-ticking this, however am not sure this will work.
Worth a try though.

Or go to Tools | Options | Maintenance | Clean Up Now and choose the
group, or server at the top and then Reset.

It would be a good idea to compact your folders when you're done.

Resetting and compacting (although compacting is no longer an option in
Windows mail), will get the posts back, but as mentioned this is a pain in
the arse to keep doing this, particularly as you loose your watched posts.

Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are
open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the
Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything
until the compacting is completed.

I'm not sure why compacting alone would help. I have even tried regularly
manually deleting posts older than a day, but still get the problem.

My personal preference is to disregard synchronizing and rather have OE
check for news when it checks for mail. Tools | Accounts | News. Check: "
Include this account...........".

I don't use OE or Windows Mail for my emails, I use it purely as a
newsreader.

 

[Ali]

I had it set to get 500 at a time. Although, for example I check an hour
after posting and there is much less than 500 new posts, maybe just 10 new
posts. I will try un-ticking this, however am not sure this will work.
Worth a try though.

Just realised what I said. ;-) No chance. Downloading a few hundred
thousand posts for each group. Come on...

 

[Bruce Hagen]

Just realised what I said. ;-) No chance. Downloading a few hundred
thousand posts for each group. Come on...

Are Window Mail rules the same as OE?

If you want to download newsgroups, but don't want hundreds, or thousands,
of messages, you can create a message rule such as this:

Tools | Message Rules | News.

Box 1: Where the message was sent more than days ago
Box 2: Delete it & Stop processing more rules
Box 3: Click on "Days" and choose the # of days you want.
Name the rule.

Even if you only use WM for newsgroups, you can still set it to check for
new messages every X minutes and check the news account to be included.

 

[mikeyhsd]

being that everything is setup and performing as expected except for this error,

it is not uncommon for the servers to get out of sync. there are usually , at microsoft anyway, several servers linked to provide service.

for instance in the microsost groups for defender they are constantly getting out of sync,. showing messages when there is none.
or other way around no messages when there are some.




(e-mail address removed)



I have used many different versions of Outlook Express and now Windows Mail
as my Newsreader, but one problem has never disappeared, which is missing
posts! I have also used numerous ISP's/news servers over the years too.

So, for example, intermittently when I reply to a post, I am unable to see
the reply I have posted, but I will get people responding to my 'invisible'
post (so it is obviously visible to the rest of the world). If I reset the
newsgroup and download again, then I can see the post, but is a pain in the
arse to keep doing this, particularly as you loose your watched posts.

There have been a huge amount of people complaining of this over the years,
but for some bizarre reason, nobody is able to give a decent explanation and
fix. I gave up years ago, but am hoping that since then, there is now an
actual explanation for this phenomenon.

So, the question, years on, does anyone know why this happens?

 

[Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM]

Just realised what I said. ;-) No chance. Downloading a few hundred
thousand posts for each group. Come on...

Download your 500.
Click Edit | Catch Up. This will mark all earlier posts as read so they
won't be downloaded.
Uncheck the Download 500 option. Now it will download all new posts.

Also, use WinMail's Microsoft Communities for the microsoft.public
newsgroups. If you don't have (or want) a Passport/Windows Live ID click
Tools | Options and uncheck the option 'Use newsgroup message rating
features'.

 

[Ali]

Hello Frank

Thank you for your reply, I know where you are coming from as I have tried
this before. However, I will perform the test again.

I will send this post, I will then wait 10 minutes and then 'Catch up' all
groups. I will then come out of the newsreader, go back in, click on the
group and then see if I can view this post.

See you in 10! ;-)

 

[Ali]

Well, despite 'catching up' 10 minutes after posting, I can still see by
post OK.

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

I have used many different versions of Outlook Express and now Windows Mail
as my Newsreader, but one problem has never disappeared, which is missing
posts! I have also used numerous ISP's/news servers over the years too.

So, for example, intermittently when I reply to a post, I am unable to see
the reply I have posted, but I will get people responding to my 'invisible'
post (so it is obviously visible to the rest of the world). If I reset the
newsgroup and download again, then I can see the post, but is a pain in the
arse to keep doing this, particularly as you loose your watched posts.

You use Watched Conversation in newsgroups from the news accounts
you have problems with? That's a clue.

There have been a huge amount of people complaining of this over the years,
but for some bizarre reason, nobody is able to give a decent explanation and
fix.

Given enough details there is always an explanation.
The problem is that most people don't want to do the troubleshooting
or have the ability to do the analysis.

I gave up years ago, but am hoping that since then, there is now an
actual explanation for this phenomenon.

So, the question, years on, does anyone know why this happens?

Many moons ago I helped a poster figure out the reason for his symptom:

http://groups.google.com/group/micr...crosoft.*.ie5.outlookexpress#fbb0e03bff464ed7


OE and now WLM both feature "loose catch-up" for people who use both
the Watched Conversation marking in *any* newsgroup in a news account
and a synchronize command other than Synchronize All. I call it "loose"
because if you want you can get the headers for the missing messages
back by using the Headers button.

I thought that this had been fixed in later updates to OE6sp2.
Supposedly another bug about the Watched Conversation feature
was fixed then. I haven't bothered testing it again, since I found
that Synchronize All works. I tried using Synchronize Account
in WLM but noticed the problem happening in it, so reverted to using
Synchronize All with it too.

YMMV.


FYI

Robert Aldwinckle
---

 

[Ali]

That's because it's intermittent.

How can you carry out troubleshooting on a random intermittent problem? If
it's not happening at the time, you can do all the troubleshooting in the
world, but the results will be normal.

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

That's because it's intermittent.

How can you carry out troubleshooting on a random intermittent problem? If
it's not happening at the time, you can do all the troubleshooting in the
world, but the results will be normal.

Did you read the thread from the link I posted?
We started off noticing some key factors which seemed to be involved in
a problem symptom, formed a hypothesis which exploited those factors
and explained the symptom, did some controlled testing while tracing,
learned some more facts about the symptoms, revised the hypothesis
slightly and then devised a test which could reliably reproduce a predictable
output, which, when viewed without the knowledge we were exploiting might
seem like random errors to another observer. Finally, from the knowledge
gained from the tracing and testing, we could see which combination
of features to avoid using and why and thereby were able to devise
a workaround which maximized our use of the product while avoiding
the problem symptoms that previously seemed to occur "randomly".

So far you haven't even got past step 1 of the above procedure.
E.g. you mentioned the Watched Conversation feature.
Well, you could try avoiding all use of that feature and see if your
symptoms (regarding missing messages) change. Etc.


Good luck

Robert
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