netscape mail inbox problems

I'm using Netscape 6.2 on Mac OS9 and I've been having problems accessing my email inbox recently. (All the other email folders work fine; it's just an inbox problem.)

When I click the "Get Msg" icon, I get an error message that reads "Unable to write the email to the mail box. Make sure the file system allows you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox." Sometimes I also get a message in the status bar at the bottom of the email window that reads "Building summary file for inbox." Sometimes the messages that are stored in my inbox are visible, and sometimes they are not. Sometimes it looks like the inbox is downloading messages, but it never finishes and eventually stops trying.

I'm at a loss. Please help!

 

pinyon,

Welcome to TSG.

Well first off netscape 6.x always had trouble with the email and is the worse version they ever had so you may want to upgrade. But lets get the email first.

Profiles Folder Location for Netscape 7.x / Mozilla 1.x / Firefox0.x / Thunderbird0.x

http://home.att.net/~cherokee67/ns7profloc.html

Let go into your mail folder and find the inbox.msf file. Your see two of each file with the same name and the one has .msf on the end of it. These are the folders. If you made other folder your have them in another sub folder so look in there too.

But to start with close down netscape and back up your user folder or just the mail folder. Then delete the inbox.msf file. Now open up netscape mail and click on your inbox. Went you open netscape and click on the inbox it will make a new inbox.msf file that will have all the emails from the inbox in it.

 

Okay, I did all that. Now when I open my inbox I get the "Building summary file for inbox" message in the status bar and, slowly but surely, all of my old inbox messages appear. That's a step in the right direction.

But I still can't receive any new messages. When I click "Get messages," the status bar says "Receiving 1 of 11 messages" and tries to load them, but never quite succeeds. The bar at the bottom of the window that shows the loading progress only goes so far before it stops. This is the problem I was having yesterday before I started getting the "Unable to write" errors I mentioned in the initial post.

Is it possible I was sent an email that's fouling up the system? Is there any way I can circumvent having to load that first message? Now that I think about it, while I was working on this problem yesterday, I was able to receive one new email, which happened to be spam with an attachment (I hardly ever get spam in this account--maybe one every other month or so). I deleted it without opening it and then emptied the trash, so it's no longer on the system. I don't know if this has anything to do with anything, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

What do I do now? Do I need to just reinstall Netscape? If I do that can I import all of my old messages into the new program?

Thanks a million!

 

Well delete the trash.msf file to be sure it is gone. I would just delete all the .msf files and they will all get rebuild.

Do you have other folder that open ok?
Now don't know if your ISP is the trouble here because they have to download all the email and then it does a ok type of check to see that you got the email. If you don't get to that last part then your mail will not show up.

But lets see if your ISP is having troubles. Go here and use the same user name and password you use for your ISP email.
http://mail2web.com/
If it works then it ok then it should also be working on your PC. So that would mean something is out of wack with netscape.

Have you got cable or DSL? If I was going to reinstall Netscape I would get the new version. You can get Netscape 7.2 here at http://sillydog.org/narchive/ Then do a clean install.
Performing a "Clean" Install for Netscape 7 / Mozilla 1.x

http://home.att.net/~cherokee67/ns67cleaninstall.html

It tells you all you need to back up and delete and how to do a clean install.

Another thing to do is get Ad-Aware and Spybot and update them and run a scan and run a scan with your Anti-Virus program.

I have also gone into Advanced Preferences - Scripts & Plugins and unchecked... Enable JavaScript for: Mail & Newsgroups
and
Enable Plugins for: Mail & Newsgroups:
Keeps things saver that way in your email.
If you know a attachment is good something you can recheck the Enable JavaScript for: Mail & Newsgroups to get things to show up right but go back and uncheck it. I have to check it sometime to get the attacment but only had to to that a couple time in the last 6 years.