Where does Windows Mail write its News debug information?

[Guest]

I've told Windows Mail to write debug information about
what communications it makes with newsgroups servers,
in order to check why Windows Mail connections with
the Tera News newsgroups server free.teranews.com
are so slow. However, during this process, I didn't find
any information about the name of the file this debug
information is written to, or what directory it is in.

Where should I look for it?

Also, has anyone here found a way to select a very
large list of newsgroups posts in one newsgroup, and
tell Windows Mail to download all the bodies for
posts for which the headers have been downloaded
and not marked read or deleted, but only if the header
has already been downloaded but not the body?

Robert Miles

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

The log file should be in the same location as your
message store, typically
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail.
The file name is probably nntp.log.

I don't know the answer to your second question.

 

[Guest]

Thank you, Gary.

That directory is correct.

There is actually a separate file for each newsgroups server
I use, with a name in the servername.log format.

The results indicate that the Tera News server is often much
slower to respond to commands than any of the other three,
despite fewer subscribed newsgroups there and fewer new
messages in those newsgroups.

Also, for messages for which you have already downloaded
the header but not the body of the message, and you click on
the listing for that message, Windows Mail usually keeps the
connection to the server active only long enough to download
the body for that one message. For new posts that arrive on
the server with Windows Mail already running, Windows
Mail usually downloads only the headers during the periodic
update connection, even if you have told it to download
entire messages for all new messages found when you start a
Windows Mail session.

Some users download headers only when they subscribe to
a new newsgroup.

This combination results in a large number of connections to
the Tera News server when you read a busy newsgroup,
and Tera News sets a limit of 300 connections a day for each
user at least on their free.teranews.com server. That restricts
users with a large number of messages with headers only
from that server from catching up reading those messages.
Looks like I may have to select all the unread messages for
which I have at least the headers, and tell Windows Mail
to download the bodies for all of them even for headers for
which it already has the bodies, in order to have much chance
of getting many bodies with only a few connections.

I plan to send Tera News the log files, to see if they can
extract more useful information from them and use the
results to improve their service.

Robert Miles

The log file should be in the same location as your
message store, typically
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail.
The file name is probably nntp.log.

I don't know the answer to your second question.

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

I hear that complaint often, about free news servers
being slow and unreliable.

 

[Guest]

Gary,

I'd call that one cheap for limited use, but not free, even though
Tera News wants to still call it free.

I prefer us.Usenet-News.net, almost as cheap for limited use,
and significantly faster.

http://usenet-news.net/?ref=103974

So far, it's been reliable, but so was Tera News for about the
same length of time after I opened an account there.

I see that Windows Mail is up to its old trick of not inserting ">"
characters before quoted lines in some replies. Seen most often
when replying to a post that used the quoted-printable coding.

Robert Miles