local poppeeper data files of several accounts seem to be currupted

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awol
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Aug 13, 2019 10:34 pm

local poppeeper data files of several accounts seem to be currupted

Post by awol »

Pop Peeper 4.5.2.0, Windows 8.1

I'm a long-time use, and I've never seen anything like this. Local poppeeper data files of several gmail accounts seem to be currupted. I would like to delete theses local files and let them be recreated by pop peeper, without risking having them be deleted in gmail.

The symptom is that Pop Peeper displays the emails as existing but blank. "View source" shows non-printable characters, e.g., "©°­º©¶©¨q˜³~d¥»³°³º„«±¥­°"

They appear normal in Thunderbird and gmail.

Allen
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Jeff
Admin / Developer
Posts: 9226
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2001 9:46 pm

Re: local poppeeper data files of several accounts seem to be currupted

Post by Jeff »

You can select File / Re-download message to see the message, but this should only be used as a sanity check. I would agree with your assessment that the databases are probably corrupt and the best thing to do in that case is to delete the database; otherwise, it can just have lingering effects.

To find the databases:
- From POP Peeper's main menu, select Tools / Options
- Select the 'Storage' page
- Refer to the "Data path"
- Open this folder in File Explorer
- Exit POP Peeper
- Back in File Explorer, you will see a sub-folder for each of your accounts; In each folder is a file named data.db. That's the file you want to delete for each account that you believe is corrupted.
- Restart POP Peeper and it will re-sync the messages when it checks mail
addsum
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2019 11:56 am

Re: local poppeeper data files of several accounts seem to be currupted

Post by addsum »

I recently had this problem as well (and thank you for this post) with three out of nine accounts having messages that suddenly became corrupt after having also used the program for quite some time and never seeing this happen before. I believe the corruption was triggered by a slower PC and trying to load the program a second time, which leads potentially to more than one Pop Peeper icon showing in the tray. With multiple instances, the message count is impacted, and one or most instances seem to be stuck trying to count messages, and they impact the first instance. Trying to then open a message leads to a notification "Please wait until retrieving message" and the message is never retrieved leading to that message becoming corrupt when restarting the program. Preventing the program from loading more than once might help to avoid this from happening (recognizing there are technical issues in doing that, and that to some degree this could be seen as end user error).
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Jeff
Admin / Developer
Posts: 9226
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2001 9:46 pm

Re: local poppeeper data files of several accounts seem to be currupted

Post by Jeff »

addsum -- That's an interesting insight and one that definitely has merit. If both instances of POP Peeper are writing data to the same database, that could definitely cause some corruption issues.

POP Peeper does try to detect if another instance is running (the 2nd instance won't run, it will just tell the first instance to open the interface); but there is a window of opportunity for 2 instances when the program(s) first start. And that window is expanded with a slower computer, as you mentioned. I will look into a more aggressive method to determine if another instance is running (there was already a reason to do that in PPv5; if I can only remember why and where I put that code...).

Thanks for the tip!
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