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Can't Read old Messages, Cannot Read the base header --->MESSAGES.TBB
 
#1
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In my inbox: I can see the messages but I cannot view them:  I get the error message: "Cannot Read the base header . . . MESSAGES.TBB".

I have tried the Maintenance Center -- Check Integrity/Repair"  -- does not fix the problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
AJ
 
 
 
#2
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Before proceeding, I'd run Chkdsk to verify that there are no harddrive errors.
(And be sure to have a backup in case more messages should get corrupted)

It's strange that the integrity check doesn't help! That would have been my first suggestion. How many messages are involved? Old ones or new?

Have you tried moving the messages in question, and maybe a few surrounding ones, to a different folder, by selecting them and drag-and-dropping them there? (might be best to drop them into a new, empty subfolder of a different account).  Or, exporting them, and importing them into a different folder?
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#3
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I ran chkdsk -- no errors.

I cannot copy messages to another folder. Here is what happens: I click on one (or several) messages, I go up to the menu bar, click "Message", then "Copy to Folder". At the bottom of the window it shows "Moved from folder "inbox" to folder "Test" 1 message.  BUT that message does not appear in the "Test" folder, The total shows zero.

Note: Only old messages have a problem. If I download new messages, they work fine.

When I try again with check integrity/repair, nothing is fixed - and I get this message:

Folder \\AJ\Inbox checked, 350,526 broken messages reported, 0 messages recovered
    ERROR: Could not create backup file

(Note: I have 3.5TB space on drive)

Any ideas to try?

Thanks.
Edited: Alex Jason - 20 September 2020 06:49:36
 
 
 
#4
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Quote
Alex Jason wrote:
When I try again with check integrity/repair, nothing is fixed - and I get this message:Folder \\AJ\Inbox checked, 350,526 broken messages reported, 0 messages recovered     ERROR: Could not create backup file(Note: I have 3.5TB space on drive)

How much space do you have left on the drive that holds your TEMP folder? Maybe that's where The Bat is trying to create a backup of your message base before trying to fix it.

Speaking of backups, do you have a backup from before the corruption occurred? If so, be sure not to overwrite that.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#5
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I have 3.5TB space on the TEMP drive. So, space is not the problem. I even tried moving the TEMP folder to another drive with more space -- but that did not help things. I still get the "could not create backup file" message.

It looks hopeless. RIT has not replied to my ticket about this and there doesn't appear to be any solution.
 
 
 
#6
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What I would do at this point is get a copy of Proces Monitor (ProcMon), free from Sysinternals, and use that to monitor TheBat's interaction with the file system and registry. With some luck it will show you what TheBat does exactly to cause the error about a backup file.

I'd also make a backup of the account's folder (or the whole mail folder). Having a copy would allow you e.g. to experiment with an older version of TheBat to see if that makes a difference (that is: see if it can read the messages, or repair them).  Something else that I'd look into is if you can delete (or just rename) an index file to trick/trigger TheBat in creating a new one that works. I think I've read about that on this forum, but that was a very long time ago. A google search limited to site:ritlabs.com might help find it).
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#7
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Daniel,

I appreciate your efforts to help but I'm quite disgusted with RIT Labs non-help.

Using ProcMon to analyze the activity is beyond my level of computer competence -- it is something that RIT Labs should do.

The fact that TB can't create the backup file: I don't know why -- my computer works perfectly with every other app. And what is the "backup" file about?  I guess no one here really knows.

The main problem appears to be with the error message: "Cannot read the base header" in the .TBB file. Where is the base header?  I tried looking into the .TBB file with an hex editor but I couldn't make sense of anything.

When you say to delete or rename an index file . . .   I'm willing to try this but which is the index file?  the .TBN or the .TBB?
 
 
 
#8
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Well Alex, this is a user-to-user forum and the Ritlabs people don't show their faces here very often. Hopefully they'll respond to your support request soon now that the weekend is over.

ProcMon isn't very hard to use. Ritlabs cannot do it for you, it has to be done on the PC that has the problem.

From what I understand, .TBB holds the actual messages and .TBN is the index. If you close TheBat and then delete an index file, TheBat should rebuild it when you next relaunch it and go into that folder (note: if you're using an encrypted message base, those filename extensions will be different).

When I entered [tbn tbb index site:ritlabs.com] into Google, a whole lot of pages with potentially useful information came up. ["base header" site:ritlabs.com] brought up some search results in Russian, maybe you could read them using Google Translate.

There are some 3d party tools that can work with TBB files. Maybe those can help you recover the missing messages? See for instance:

https://www.bitrecover.com/free/the-bat-viewer/
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/recover-and-restore-deleted-email-messages-from-the-bat/
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#9
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Daniel,

I want to thank you very much for the help you have offered. Your comments and suggestions are very welcomed and valuable -- and you are very generous with the time you have given me. I appreciate it.

I was surprised that there are apps that will attempt to fix TB files -- the .TBB file. I have used all that you found and one other. They are all problematic. The only one that seems to work is https://www.bitrecover.com/bat-converter/. This $39 app will convert .TBB messages into .eml (and other formats) but with the 350K messages I have in my .TBB, it takes much time (not sure how much) to process them but the big problem is then importing them into TB. When you click on "Import" messages and the selection window shows the .eml messages, it takes many, many hours to sel ect all for importing. After they have all been selected for import, then the importing process begins -- for more hours.

I did this process once took more than 24 hours -- and -- yes, I did get the messages back into my INBOX but many messages were mixed up -- there were all sorts of problems. I'm trying this long, long process again after making some changes that I hoped might improve things. But it is been about 6 hours now, and I still haven't been able to select-all messages in the import window. Difficult to tell if TB is locked up or is actually working on this.

I have spent many hours trying to fix things -- and this has already caused me some serious problems.

I can see now that it is very unlikely that my INBOX will ever be fixed properly. I'm accepting now that over 10 years of emails will be essentially lost or confused. Backups?  Oh, yes I had some .TBB/.TBN backup but they have all be damaged now because every one I've brought into TB has become corrupted.

This continuing disaster started after I did  a check integrity/repair on my inbox. Nothing worked properly after that.

One thing I have learned is that RIT Labs cannot be relied upon to help its users. I opened a support ticket before I posted here. Since there are some third-party repair tools, I'm sure RIT has better ones. But they can't be bothered to offer them to users.

I think anyone using TB or considering to buy it should strongly consider that if you have problems, you are on your own. (Unless you are fortunate enough to get Daniels' kind assistance.)  

Don't count on any help fr om RIT.

Alex Jason
Edited: Alex Jason - 23 September 2020 07:43:57
 
 
 
#10
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Very sorry to hear about the loss of all those messages and the problems it has caused you! I hope you'll still manage to recover a good bunch. Either way, I'd recommend that you keep your backups (and any other file copies you may have made) in case that a solution is offered later on. Don't throw them away in frustration.. :]

Speaking generally, corruptions like these can be caused by just a few wrong bytes in the wrong part of a file. When you're importing messages, does that process stop at one particular message or at one particular part of the TBB file? Or, do the corruptions start at one particular message (when they're sorted chronologically)? If you could figure that out, maybe you can find out what the actual stumbling block is here, and fix it manually.  As a generic file viewer that lets you browse, search and examine any file of any size, I like the free "LISTER" utility (essentially a simple imitation of Vernon Buerg's LIST utility from the DOS days) available from https://www.ghisler.com/lister/.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#11
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No, there is no hint about what is happening. When I tried importing messages  --> from v2 TBB file:  I see TB "importing messages" for about 5 minutes and then I get the message: "0 messages converted."

RIT finally replied to my support request -- but I had already tried (many times) what they suggested -- clearing out the inbox and then importing from an old .TBB file.

But the problem is now that I used my backup .TBB files previously. I placed them in the Inbox, opened TB -- then I used the terribly, flawed integrity/restore utility which corrupted every .TBB file I used. (This is what created my problem).

I tried using Lister but I could not find anything helpful in the text. The order of messages seems to also be corrupted.
Edited: Alex Jason - 24 September 2020 05:15:56
 
 
 
#12
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I take offense at Alex's comments on tech support. TB! is the ONLY email client that provides personal tech support. Try getting personal help from the developers at Thunderbird, Postbox, Gmail, Exchange, Outlook, or any other client. It's not there. RIT responds to all customer requests, as was done for him. He states that a "terribly flawed integrity/restore utility" was responsible for his problem, yet that utility has served TB! users successfully for over a decade. As Daniel mentioned, sometimes files get corrupted. That happens. I cannot believe that he lost ten years worth of emails for that one problem, unless he has lived with no external backups for the past ten years, in which case the ultimate reason for his loss resides with him. Each of us has the responsibility for backup. TB! does have that feature, but ultimately the role resides with us, the users. I do hope he finds a way to recover his lost emails, but TB! is not to blame, and certainly not RIT tech support.
 
 
 
#13
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Quote
But the problem is now that I used my backup .TBB files previously. I placed them in the Inbox, opened TB -- then I used the terribly, flawed integrity/restore utility which corrupted every .TBB file I used. (This is what created my problem).

Could you expand on that a little - which version of The Bat are you using? Had your backup been created by the same version? What prompted you to restore it? Did you do so by manually copying an older messages.tbb file into the Inbox subfolder of that account (which would overwrite the existing file), or by a different name and then try to import from it? Do you still have copies of your original messages.tbb file and of the older backup that you replaced it with?
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#14
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Quote
david kirk wrote:
[..] but ultimately the role resides with us, the users.

Well, that's a lesson that we've probably all had to learn the hard way, at the cost of quite some understandable frustration :)
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#15
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I think I do have justification for not getting a reply to my urgent problem -- for 4 or 5 days. And then I got a reply that offered a solution that did not work. I replied and told them that and asked what else I could do.  

No reply to that -- it has been two days.  So, I should be happy with this?

I don't think that is good tech support -- but I realize that you do.

The fact is that the terribly flawed integrity/restore utility is just that: Flawed. What happened to my .TBB files me was not caused by me. I just used the utility and it corrupted my files.

TB! is to blame, TB! caused my problem and offers no method to fix it.

Good luck to you
Edited: Alex Jason - 25 September 2020 10:55:59
 
 
 
#16
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Quote
Daniel van Rooijen wrote:
Quote
But the problem is now that I used my backup .TBB files previously. I placed them in the Inbox, opened TB -- then I used the terribly, flawed integrity/restore utility which corrupted every .TBB file I used. (This is what created my problem).

Could you expand on that a little - which version of The Bat are you using? Had your backup been created by the same version? What prompted you to restore it? Did you do so by manually copying an older messages.tbb file into the Inbox subfolder of that account (which would overwrite the existing file), or by a different name and then try to import from it? Do you still have copies of your original messages.tbb file and of the older backup that you replaced it with?
Daniel,

I can not tell you which version I'm using because for the past 36 hours, I have been trying to restore an old .TBK file. TB has been working on it (I think/hope) all this time and I cannot see the actual app.  I was backing up the entire INBOX every night and I had a few other backups of the .TBB file so the backup .TBB's were all from the same version.  

I still have older .TBB files but they are all corrupted. Because when I first had the integrity/repair malfunction, I thought -- okay, I've got a backup. But when I used the backup .TBB file(s), they got corrupted also. Each one.

As I explained, I hoping that my .TBK file (if the in-process restore operation ever finishes) will get me back to only loosing perhaps a year of messages -- not sure yet.

Alex
 
 
 
#17
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Best of luck and keep us posted.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#18
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Hi Daniel,

Well, it is over -- I think. I've spent 7+ days on this email recovery disaster. I think I'm done. I used an old backup from 2018 to get many of my lost messages and then I was able to recover some from various TB corrupted .TBB files. These are my backup .TBB files that I had saved and then brought into TB to restore my data -- which were severely damaged by the flawed repair/integrity tool which caused my original problem and then many others.

Be advised TB users: Don't rely on that crap utility. Even RIT admitted to me that it can get confused by large .TBB files. (If so, why aren't users warned that a file is getting too big? -- Or warned not to use the utility on large files?  Yes,  it must be my fault that I didn't know that . . . . )

You should also realize that you cannot count on RIT Labs to help you. Their response to my problem was very slow and pathetic. When the "solutions" they offered didn't work at all, they finally gave me the free utility that I had already tried unsuccessfully to use. They showed minimal interest in helping a 20 year user.

Here is something you should remember: The ONLY thing that really helped me was the $39 (worth it) app https://www.bitrecover.com/bat-converter/
This app allowed me to recover from damaged .TBB files. RIT should have something like that.

I switched to a new email app which appears very nice: em Client (EMC). I've been using it for several days and I do like it. One warning to anyone considering using em Client is that it will NOT restore your TB messages -- even though the website claims that it can. To be accurate, yes, it will automatically find and import all your TB messages but it places them all in one folder! I used the bitrecover app to export all my recovered emails from their TB folders into windows folders as .eml files. Then I used EMC to manually import them into new folders. It worked well. One thing I really like about EMC is that it will try hard to fix your server settings. Once you enter your email address and password, it automatically will try many permutations of ports and credential syntax until it finds the correct one. Amazing, really.

So, goodbye to TB forever.

Alex Jason
 
 
 
#19
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Too bad that it ends this way, but best of luck with the new mail client, Alex!
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
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