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Unable to restore on new machine
 
#1
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Hi,

I just bought a new PC with Vista Ultimate 32-bit.  I made a backup (using Tools/Backup) on the old machine.  My data on the old machine was on the E: drive.  This time I wanted to put it on the D: drive.  I should have remembered from past experience that The Bat!'s restore feature is a pain to work with.  This time however it seems to be winning against all my efforts.

When I installed The Bat! (latest version) on the new machine, it asked whether I wanted to create an e-mail account or restore from a backup.  I chose that.  It didn't take long before it complained about not being able to find an E: drive.  But it still created the e-mail accounts, not sure where exactly.  Needless to say, there were no e-mails, just the accounts and the folders.

So I figured alright, I can't do what I want on my PC, I'll create an E: drive and put my data on there.  I uninstalled The Bat! and told it not to keep the working files etc...  Then I reinstalled it and was expecting it to offer to restore again, but noooooo.  Somehow those accounts were still there.  Then if I try to restore, it complains about not being able to create attachments under c:\users\<whatever>\appdata\roaming\The Bat! (not sure that's the exact path, but close enough.)

Alright... I uninstalled The Bat! again, deleted the directory, and reinstalled again.  THE DATA IS STILL THERE!!!! Unbelievable!  I deleted this stuff and double checked, but somehow it reappeared by magic.

So the question is, how do I get rid of all these accounts and anything The Bat!'s uninstallation seems to be leaving behind, so that when I reinstall, it'll offer me to restore right away, and this time it'll see its cherished E: drive?  It's bad enough that it won't let me restore to another drive, but not being able to restore at all now is a complete pain (frankly, a reinstall of The Bat! has always been one of the most painful part of the whole PC configuration process.)

Any help would be appreciated.  I'd really like to be able to check my mail on the new PC, and that without having to reinstall Vista just to get rid of whatever The Bat! is hiding somewhere.

Thanks!
Michel
 
 
 
#2
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After the un-installation, search your drives for "thebat" and "ritlabs", delete any folder found.
Then start Regedit as administrator (use 'Run as admin')
Search for keys [only] named "RIT" (without quotes), enable exact name match. Delete the whole keys (folders in the left regedit pane).
Copy your mail folder from old PC to new PC. Start TB installation, now it shouldn't remember anything. At some point it will ask where the mail folder should be, select the folder you copied from old PC. Or if there is no such prompt, after the install go to
Options/Preferences/System and change the mail folder there.

The best and trouble-free way to backup TB is simply to zip the whole mail folder, as everything important is there - messages, filters, acc. settings, adr. books etc. Don't use the built-in backup tool, unless you enjoy troubleshooting.
 
 
 
#3
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It worked, thanks a lot!  One has to wonder about the usefulness of the backup/restore feature though.

After installing The Bat! and telling it what folder to use, it found the directory tree I had copied, but only identified 3 out of 6 or so accounts.  I then tried a restore, but once again I got the error related to the attachments.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, I closed The Bat!, re-copied the entire directory tree again, and when I restarted it, it was able to see all the accounts.

I think RIT Labs can skip on adding nice little features for now and focus on having a backup and restore procedure that actually works.

Thanks again for your help, you're a life saver!
Michel
 
 
 
#4
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"a backup and restore procedure that actually works" is making an archive of the whole mail folder - it can't be more simple, so I don't see any need for improving the built-in backup tool - just use Winrar or a similar app instead.

The built-in backup tool is good in that it can make selective backups of only messages, only settings etc., but you can achieve the same by selecting file types to be archived. For example to have a small backup(kilobytes) of everything except messages, exclude *.TBB and *.TBI files.
 
 
 
#5
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One of the advantages of the built-in backup tool is that it also restores your settings and your registration info.
It's also good for compressing your address book and filters. Just create a backup of your address book and restore it. You'll notice that all the deleted entries that were still present in the .ABD file have been purged. Same for the sorting office.

The major disadvantage for the internal backup is that it wants to restore the message base to the same path as it was on the previous config.
__________________________________
I'm just a user of The Bat! I don't work for Ritlabs.
 
 
 
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