Xp Security and VB6 Applications

[Jim Mack]

Yes, I see it right below this conversation.
(In microsoft.public.vb.winapi)
I'm also using OE, though mine is v. 5.00.

I don't know whether it will make a difference to
do anything with the DBX files, but I do know that
at least in v. 5 the DBX system is very funky.

I have to periodically delete my folders.dbx because
it gets so big. I do the same thing with the individual
folder DBXs. They seem to hold a copy of everything
that has ever been in them. When you delete something
it gets marked as deleted but it doesn't get removed!
That's also true for the Deleted.DBX file. I have to delete
everytnig twice just to have it show as deleted....then it's
still not deleted - just inaccessible.
It shrinks the total OE folder size by several MB every time
I clean it.

File -> Folder -> Compact All Folders (Alt-F 3 times)

It might take a few minutes if you have large folders that you haven't compacted in a long time, but when you're done your folders will have little or no wasted space. A lot easier than deleting and starting over, and it preserves the high message number in News folders.

 

[mayayana]

File -> Folder -> Compact All Folders (Alt-F 3 times)

It might take a few minutes if you have large folders that you haven't
compacted in a long time, but when you're done your folders will have little
or no wasted space. A lot easier than deleting and starting over, and it
preserves the high message number in News folders.


Wow! ...learn something new every day.
I knew about the compacting under the
Maintenance tab but had never seen the
Files -> Folders compacting option. It does,
indeed, do the job.

As for the MSI utility:
Sam says he can't see it either, so I'll just
post the link that I should have posted in the
first place:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/zips/msiprog.zip

 

[Jim Carlock]

It does, indeed, do the job.

I'll mention that compacting the folders will delete the deleted files.
Another thing, I've tested OE and it seems to start to have some
problems IF one .dbx file exceeds 300MB in size. It also runs into
problems IF the computer shuts off while OE is opened (ie, power
company sends a spike to your house and no UPS protection).

The OE "folders.dbx" is the main file that presents problems. When
ever you open any folder, the folders.dbx is opened first to determine
what kind of "folder nesting" exists within the file. You can test
that by trying to compact OE after opening a newsgroup or a folder
with a set of nested folders.

OE stores the high and low message count inside of "folders.dbx".
It also stores the nesting of all your "local folders" inside "folders.dbx".
And one last thing I haven't tested out but it sits in the back of my
mind, is that if your folders.dbx is deleted, you'll have to resubscribe
to newsgroups.

To test it out
1) start OE
2) create a new identity,
3) create a set of nested folders,
4) Go into the maintainence area and set the "store folder" to an easy to
get to location for testing,
5) shut down OE
6) restart OE (to get the new store folder to go into effect),
7) close OE again,
8) use Explorer to navigate to your "store folder"
9) delete only "folders.dbx" for the test account,
10) restart OE

You'll notice that your folder nesting is totally hosed up and doesn't
exist anymore.

Hope that helps.

 

[Sam Hobbs]

Wow! ...learn something new every day.
I knew about the compacting under the
Maintenance tab but had never seen the
Files -> Folders compacting option. It does,
indeed, do the job.

There is more that I have not mentioned and that others might not be
mentioning because it is off-topic. As I said, if you spend time looking at
the OE newsgroup, there is a lot to learn.

 

[mayayana]

Thanks, but having learned how to compact
the folders does the trick. Now if I can just figure
out how to hook the IE Preview window, and slip in
the Mozilla ActiveX control in its place so that I can
safely open HTML email...
.....then I just might stick with OE.