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The Bat Pro 4.0.18 crash and all e-mails gone, crashed app delete all my e-mails and contacts
 
#1
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I installed The Bat Pro 4.0.18 in encryption mode (on the fly), and successfuly imported more than 4.000 e-mais from Apple Entourage (in Unix mailbox mode). I been testing it for 2 weeks, with the intention of buying it, and all works fine. But last Thursday, I was deleting a few e-mails in the inbox and the application crash.
When I try to reopen The Bat, I get "can not open ikey.id". I look at the mails folder and ikey.id file is gone, also the folder seems to be decreased in size (previously 500 MB, now 150 KB!!!!). I ran chkdsk /f /r in boot mode, and all the situation goes the same: all the files was gone, including ikey.id  (The hard disk is a new Western Digital SATAII, 160 GB, with zero errors. I ran several tests on it, and all the files on the disk are OK).

In The Bat's e-mails folder I found some log files. They contains the following info:

(( FILE: thebat_Exceptions.log ))
Date: 22 May 2008 14:00:18
Address: 00B90B41
ClassName: EAccessViolation
Message: Access violation at address 00B90B41 in module 'thebat.exe'. Read of address 00000000
IsOSException: 1
Modules:
00400000 20080310132920 C:\Archivos de programa\The Bat!\thebat.exe
Stack:
00B90B41 [00400000] (and more...)

(( FILE: ex_log.txt  ))

v4.0.18 user/PCname 22/05/2008 02:00:18 p.m. Records:FolderDB.Free EAccessViolation Access violation

at address 00B90B41 in module 'thebat.exe'. Read of address 00000000

---
The other few files left in the folder are like:
ACCOUNT.~EFB, ACCOUNT.EFB, ACCOUNT.EFN, ADDRBOOK.ENI, FolderTabs.EDB...

I'am really surprised and disappointed. Why The Bat fails so big?!!
Can I recover any messages? Could Ritlabs guarantee that this won't happen again?

Thank you. Best Regards.
 
 
 
#2
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in case you don't have a backup, try with some file recovery tool like GetDataBack or similar. In case files were deleted, there is still a chance some to be restored.

If you want encryption, better don't use theBat's on the fly encryption. Instead, use non-encrypted message bases but put your mail folder inside an encrypted container - like TrueCrypt or PGPGDisk virtual disk.
TrueCrypt is freeware.
Needless to say, make regular backups - it's enough to simply rar or zip the mail folder. In case of a problem close theBat, delete the mail folder and restore the backed up one. If something happened once, no one can guarantee it won't happen again.
Edited: bigg one - 31 May 2008 10:12:34
 
 
 
#3
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Carlos,

AFAIK there isn't a reason why you shouldn't be able to delete messages from the inbox. The 4.0.18 version you're using could give an AV on deleting Address Book entries or in rare cases during POP3 sessions.

The disappearing ikey.id file is the most surprising thing in your story. TB doesn't overwrite that file ever, my ikey.id file is dated 16 June 2005. I was even using a different computer back then.
That suggests that you're running some tool that's interfering with TB, otherwise the ikey.id file couldn't be deleted.
Therefore there can't be given any guarantees that this won't happen again, unless you identify the program that did the deleting.
BTW That's about the only thing I agree with from big one's posting. My experience with encrypted containers is less than stellar and I haven't had any data loss with TB's OTFE since June 2005, that's a pretty good track record.

About restoring your data.
Move your mail directory to a safe locaton.
Uninstall TB
(When you were running TB from a restricted user account from Windows you should open Regedit in that account and delete the registry tree HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RIT from the registry)
Install TB again (and while you're at it, download and install the 4.0.24 version in stead of the 4.0.18 version you were using)
Run TB
TB will recognize that it's been run for the first time and will ask for OTFE, answer affirmative
Pick the same password and mail directory as before and tell it you want to create a new account, give thatr account the same name as your old account had.
Enter the account data and close TB, don't start downloading any messages yet.
Make a copy of you new mail directory to a safe location.
Copy the old mail directory on top of the new one, that way any old files will replace the new ones, but any missing files (like the ikey.id file) will have their new counterpart.
Run TB, don't start downloading any messages yet and check whether everyting looks fine.
Create a backup (an internal one with TB, it has some advantages that big one overlooks, even though it has some distinct disadvantages too)
When everything is going fine until now, start downloading your new mail.

When anything doesn't go satisfactory, please report that.
What I'm missing in your first post:
What OS version are you using, what virus scanner, firewall, spam filter and any other monitoring software that you might be running. Somewhere among those tools there's the one that deleted your ikey.id

BTW Was there any reason that you started your trial with an old version?
__________________________________
I'm just a user of The Bat! I don't work for Ritlabs.
 
 
 
#4
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Many thanks to bigg one and Roelof Otten,

After check disk I try to unerase files. I found some fuzzed files -most of them with the same name-, with low chances of recover and no ikey.id file.

System info:
AMD Sempron LE-1150 2.01 GHZ
MBoard ASRock ALive NF6P-VSTA
BIOS American Megatrends Inc. P1.20, 18/december/2007
SMBIOS  2.4
DDRII 1Gb PC6400 800Mhz
GeForce 6150SE
HD 160 Gb 7200 S-ATA II WESTERN DIGITAL
File System: NTFS

Win XP PRO SP2 Spanish (all updates to May 2008)
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Comp. 2600
Zone Alarm (free version, without antivir) v. 7.0.462, TrueVector:7.0.462.000
Avira AntiVir Personal v. 8.1.00.295
(I check it and there is NO files in Quarantine)

I will try Roelof Otten's "About restoring your data" but I'm skeptic about effectiveness, because like I said before the mails folder lost more than 499 MB of content.

I installed The Bat Pro 4.0.18 because is the version I had downloaded, virus check and backup earlier. My friend use The Bat 2 since many years with no problems, why TB 4.0.18 should fail? (that's was my thinking).

Thank you, and regards from Argentina.
 
 
 
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