PG Offline

Thanks again for creating PG Offline. As I mentioned here when the Yahoo Groups platform was shutting down, I was a moderator of several medical and family health peer support groups. PG Offline allowed my colleagues and I to preserve hundreds of thousands of stories and contributions spanning more than a decade. That content remains as a useful reference source to this day, thanks to PG Offline.

I'm finally retiring the computer that had been running my registered copy of PG Offline, so I've been curious about how to keep PG Offline running into the future, especially given that Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 in October 2025.

While I haven't run exhaustive tests, I recently installed PG Offline 4.0.907 with a copy of my old database in what I imagine is a fairly unusual configuration. I installed them on a Parallels Workstation 19.2.1 virtual machine running Windows 11 Pro for ARM processors on an M1 MacBook Air. So far, I haven't encountered any glitches, and I've been delighted by the performance.

Based on this, I would expect little difficulty moving existing PG Offline installations to Windows 11 systems of any type, though of course one should make an archival backup of the original database for safety.

I noticed I did not need to enter a new registration code after moving to the new environment, and also that there were no registration tools in the PG Offline "Help" menu. Am I correct in presuming that PG Offline archives now can be moved freely to new systems?

Once again, thanks for creating such a useful, robust tool.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Have you given consideration to the Groups.io
venture?
Ron

I would like my name added to the PG Offline for Groups.io  list also.

Ron

Last I knew the HTML export option was limited in non-paid versions.  Like you could do 1000 but no more…?  That's specifically what I'm asking about.  I can install to test but I was pretty sure that was the case when I last tried it.  (I did a little with a trial version in late 2019 but only exported pg4s at the time, beyond testing the HTML export and running into the limit.)

Its effectively freeware.

The only restricted feature is "download from Yahoo" which you can't do now anyway.

Groups must be added manually before they can be imported because... I don't have Yahoo to get the group names anymore.

Group --- Add New Group.

Since Yahoo Groups are now completely defunct, the only use for PGO, as far as I can tell, is to browse and manage archives saved before everything was deleted.  Are there any plans for eventually releasing it as freeware so that future people who want to export html of groups, for instance, might be able to do so?  It's currently in the awkward spot between "valuable enough to make some money" and "uninteresting to anyone"; it's not worth $25 just to be able to export an html file or two, and that's about the only task that PGO is really necessary for at this point.  (Even with the pg4 files, one of the ArchiveTeam volunteers scripted me a nice Python script that converts any pg4, attachments and all, to mbox files, which can be imported then into Sylpheed or most any other email client.)

I've gotten Hypermail working, which "is a program that takes a file of mail messages in UNIX mailbox format and generates a set of cross-referenced HTML documents. Each file that is created represents a separate message in the mail archive and contains links to other articles, so that the entire archive can be browsed in a number of ways by following links."  The one downside there is that it's designed to create a navigable set of messages for a website, not a batch html file that would let me scan multiple messages quickly.

To be honest, it's far faster and easier to read and search via Sylpheed (it has a nice powerful search engine), and I'm quite content with that.  But having 14 TB of Yahoo Groups data on my hard drive (everything saved by the Fandom Rescue Project and the ArchiveTeam using Yahoo's GMD, manually run Python scripts, PGO, and one or two other tools is currently sitting on several people's hard drives, of which I am one), I frequently get requests from people for group data.  A few have asked about html, and now I can tell them I have something that can be put on a website - but in some cases a batch export the way PGO does would be simpler and better for them.

I manage the Yahoo Groups data and the requests completely on a volunteer basis - I don't have extra money to spend on that (I spent that on the hard drives to store the data!) - and don't personally need the html export for myself, but it would be nice to have the option.  While others in the Fandom Rescue Project purchased PGO, I didn't, because I spent most of the Yahoo Groups crisis downloading the files and photos from groups via the AT's Python script, or joining thousands upon thousands of groups (and running Python scripts to discover more) in order to request the GetMyData files from Yahoo.  (Also, I run Linux Mint natively, so I don't tend to purchase software I can't use without resorting to a VM or an alternate computer.)

If it isn't released as freeware at some point, the day may come when it's impossible to purchase PGO, whether because something has happened to you or because the method for payment has fallen through, and I think that would be sad because of the role it now plays in making access to a part of history easier for many people.

Sorry I didn't catch the latest reply, I was out of town and offline! I will let you know.

Hi,

I don't see any "Application error" for PGO but  I do see "Application Hang". 

I checked my own event logs and I also see "Application Hang" reports for PGO.

Although I have no memory of PGO hanging.

Its not an error type I am familiar with actually.

The next time it happens can you look and see how much memory your laptop is using ?

Thanks,

Wilson.

Hi Wilson,

FYI I'm not very familiar with Event Viewer, but when I filter the Application Log to .Net Runtime events only, there are only four errors, and none of them related to PG Offline or recent enough to have happened during the period where PG Offline has been having issues (3 are HPCommRecovery from April this year, and one from an application auto-update in May). However, if I remove the .Net Runtime filter and allow all errors within the Application Log, then more are present. That is what's in the file I just emailed you.

Sorry for any difficulties. If you need something else please let me know.

Max

Please start windows Event Viewer and send me the data from the .NET Runtime error log.

It’s the second of the two reports event viewer creates for each crash.

Thanks,

Wilson.