I'm having a problem in that class but with newsgroups messages, not emails.
Windows Mail runs rather slowly if there are more than 50,000 messages per
folder, and is unable to sort them by arrival data and time starting around
80,000 per folder. Displaying more messages per folder works properly
if arranged by some other methods, such as the message size.
Under 64-bit Vista, all attempts to open Windows Mail at all, even after
running WMUtil, give an error message:
Windows Mail could not be started.. The application
was unable to open the Windows Mail message store.
Your Windows Mail mailbox data is currently being
used by another program, such as a virus scanner.
Close the program or wait for it to complete its
operation, then open Windows Mail again.
(0x800C0155)
and then another error message:
Windows Mail could not be started because MSOE.DLL could not be
initialized.
Note that neither error message gives much hint of just what other program
is using the database.
Closing down the antivirus program is difficult, and does not help with this
problem.
This problem has lasted for weeks, even after a few reboots.
Under 32-bit Vista (another computer), Windows Mail will run but is unable
to compact its database. It tries, then fails about a third of the way
through the progress bar. WMUtil can compact its database, but without
letting Windows Mail know to reset the number of runs since the last
database compaction.
Also, the 32-bit machine has been unable to perform message searches (such
as all messages mentioning a certain website) for a few months.
Both problems appeared to start about the time changes in the search
routines made Windows Mail able to search for strings in English, but in
character sets used mostly for other languages (something seen frequently in
recent newsgroups spam). Apparantly, this change causes a great increase in
the memory requirements for running Windows Mail; I've even seen it trying
to use 17 GB, on a machine that only has 8 GB.
WMUtil estimates the number of files in the database on the 64-bit nachine
at 2,300,000, and the number on the 32-bit machine at 700,000. Spread among
various folders, of course. A large fraction of these are the same post
downloaded from more than one newsgroups server - know any program that can
find those duplicates and let the user decide what to do about them? Also a
significant number are cases where Windows Mail failures have left pointers
to non-existant files in its index files -something WMUtil does NOT detect
as equivalent to a zero-length file.
I've tried installing Windows Live Mail on the 64-bit machine. It
installed, but was unable to import any messages from the Windows Mail
database, apparantly because it needs to run Windows Mail while doing this,
and gets the same error messages and at least one more when it tries this.
Also not fixed by several reboots.
Robert Miles
The number of messages in a folder is irrelevant. I have tested with over
300,000 messages in a single folder. The "in use" error message rarely
occurs and when it does, it usually indicates database corruption. If that
is the case, then the user can repair the database (
www.oehelp.com/WMUtil/)
and compact it and then when prompted the user should allow WinMail itself
to compact the database. The issues in WinMail with respect to compaction
are quite different from the issues in OE (see
www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#2
(point 2)), as the messages are not compacted in WinMail, but only the
database.
steve
