Hi Antifreez, thanks for your detailed response. Before returning to the Forum to read your suggestions I managed to fix the problem (outlined below), but firstly in answer to your questions...

What was the period of time between you last creating an email successfully and then discovering the error?
Three days had elapsed.

Did you install any thing or do anything to your PC during that period?
Yes, an Atomic Clock syncronising program. I uninstalled it (including Registry entries) but The Bat! problem remained.

Do you have a Norton product installed?
Yes, but only Go Back, so I used that to create a temporary "Virtual Drive" at a date before I had last sucessfully sent an E-mail. Still The Bat! locked up.

Next I uninstalled the Christmas version (including Registry entries) and reverted to v3.85.03. I ran this as a new install, without first copying over my mail accounts. The Bat! worked fine. But when I then copied over my mail directories the original problem returned. I then replaced my current mail directories with ones from a two-month old cloned drive, and again The Bat! functioned just fine.

I began to wonder if my current mail accounts were corrupted and I searched the forum for instances of "corrupt". I found a 19 September 2004 post from Roelof in which he described how to copy accounts from a mail directory one-by-one, checking each time to confirm The Bat would still work.

I did just that - copied each account and each of my current mail boxes over one-by-one (testing The Bat in between) and at the end of it all The Bat! worked just fine and all my current E-mails were saved. I didn't lose a thing.

Roelof's original post is here:


Antifreeze, I think if I hadn't solved the problem myself and I had followed your suggestion I am sure the advice in your last paragraph would have fixed my problem.  I am very grateful for your reply, and thanks also to our wonderful Administrator Roelof.