Turnpike FAQ

Where can I download the latest version of Turnpike?
The latest version of Turnpike Six is 6.07 for Windows 95, 98, NT4, Me, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista.

You can upgrade to the latest version at any time by fetching it by anonymous FTP from:

ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/mirrors/turnpike/entire.exe

Having fetched the EXE file, you merely run it and the installer will guide you through the rest of the process. For details of smaller download files see:

http://www.demon.net/toolkit/downloads/upgrade.html

There is a summary of the changes made from v1 to v3, from v3 to v4 and from v4.00 onwards to be found at:

http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/producthelp/internetaccess/turnpike/whatsnew/

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I can't download the newsgroup list!
Almost the first big data transfer which new users of Turnpike make is to fetch the list of newsgroups from the news server. If there is some problem with the setup of the machine then this can be a long, drawn-out affair. If the machine is set up correctly you can expect to fetch the list in less than 5 minutes (91 seconds has been claimed to be possible). If fetching it takes longer than this then you will want to fix any problems, whether you are worried about news or not, because a problem with your machine will affect everything else you do whilst online.

Note that once you see the message:

"News connection to xxxx closed - filing continues"

there is no need to stay connected. You do, however, have to leave Connect running until you see the message:

"News completed, xxxx articles fetched and filed"

Failure to have all the newsgroups filed away will mean they have to be fetched again when you next connect, which is a bit of a waste.

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Where have all the articles I fetched gone?
The totals given in the Connect program for news downloads count items fetched, without regard to whether they are articles, headers or bodies. If you have a newsgroup set to "browse" then at first just the headers are fetched. Later, if you wish, the bodies can be collected. In this simple scenario, it is reasonably easy to see where the numbers come from.

If you have any kill criteria set for a newsgroup then Connect will always fetch the headers first. It will then apply your rules, and then the bodies will be automatically fetched as appropriate. Thus, even if your rule fails to kill anything at all, the item fetch count will be twice what you might originally have expected.

The counts you see in the newsgroup folder in the Turnpike program will be the number of unread articles. If an article is cross-posted then it can be double-counted (or more) here, but will have been fetched just once. Furthermore, any articles which are fetched, but are placed onto threads which are marked "uninteresting", will not be counted at the newsgroup folder level at all.

So, you can see that checking if the numbers add up is a little complex.

A further twist is that you may be collecting newsgroups which you yourself do not have in a newsgroup folder. Turnpike will run a "sanity check" whenever someone with "news admin" permission signs on to ensure that all newsgroups that are fetched appear in someone's newsgroup folder. This may not be a strong enough check for you if one user logs on only seldom, or has now left home!

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Browse groups don't work!
Sometimes people claim that they've marked newsgroups as "browse" and they are still being fetched completely.

First, check that they are marked "browse" - you need to select all the newsgroups you want to affect AND check the "browse" box and press the "ok" button. Also, if you are unlucky enough to lose your NEWSBASE then a database rebuild will restore things, but will not know that the newsgroup is "browse".

Second, check some of the articles. Maybe they are cross-posted to another newsgroup which is not "browse". In this case they have to be fetched in their entirety.

Finally, it sometimes happens that people add a new newsgroup, discover that it is very high volume and then disconnect. They set the newsgroup to "browse" and then go back online. Unfortunately, all of the articles which were "to be fetched" before will still be in Connect's list of things to do, so they will be fetched anyway. You can edit this list of requests, but you can most easily avoid the problem by rebuilding the news database. This will keep user generated requests, but will discard the automatically generated fetch requests and will reset the "NEWNEWS time" back into the past in a proper manner.

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It's not a browse group but the bodies are missing!
If you apply any kill criteria at all to a newsgroup then Turnpike fetches the headers of the articles, examines them to check whether the article should or should not be killed, and then arranges for the body to be fetched. If you look at the newsgroup during this period, or if the news collection session does not complete for some reason, then you will see just headers and no bodies. In the fullness of time the bodies will be collected without further intervention by you.

Kill criteria include the obvious "nothing else by that person" or "nothing over 100 lines". You can check on these in the properties dialog for the newsgroup (right click on the newsgroup and select Properties). Less obviously, kill criteria include killed threads - because until the header is fetched and the reference lines inspected, it is not possible to determine whether or not the article belongs to the thread.

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What does "Software Error 256" mean?
Errors which are reported as "Software Error" followed by a number are the failures of internal consistency checks. If there was a sensible "English" explanation then one would be given, so instead, it should be thought of as "something impossible has happened".

These errors will be associated with one of the database files, for news, mail or addresses. They can be cured by a database rebuild. This process will recreate all of the indexe s and other secondary information, and will discard any primary data which a checksum indicates as having been damaged. Before doing a database rebuild it is a good idea to run a SCANDISK since this will ensure your file and directory structure is valid. Then you need to shut Turnpike, start Connect and either rebuild when you are prompted, or select Rebuild from the File menu.

The usual cause of consistency failures is one of the programs (usually Connect) failing, either locking up completely, stopping with a GPF, or a power-cut occurring. In such circumstances, buffered data can fail to be written to disk - so that the files become less than perfect. It is very rare to see this occur with the Mail database because special precautions are taken to minimize the risk, but unfortunately, these precautions would make News database handling far too slow.

As always, valuable data should be backed up. Although database rebuilds can usually recover all your email messages or news articles intact, there is no guarantee that this will always be possible.

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But it dies before I can do a database rebuild!
Sometimes it is clear that you have a problem with your mail or news databases, but Turnpike reports an error before it has run long enough to give you a chance to do a database rebuild. To correct this, rename the \turnpike\news\newsbase (or \turnpike\mail\mailbase) file to something else and then start Turnpike. The program will spot the missing file and offer to rebuild.

BEFORE ACCEPTING THE OFFER, switch task and rename the file back to its original name. Turnpike will then rebuild.

If you don't rename the file back again, more information will be lost than necessary.

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What do I need to backup?
Turnpike keeps its mail database in \Program Files \turnpike\mail\*.* and the news database in \Program Files \turnpike\news\*.*. The key files in each case are MSPOOL and NSPOOL which hold the articles, and MAILBASE and NEWSBASE which hold various indexes and other administrative information. ADDRBOOK contains the address book details. In the limit, everything can be roughly recreated from the ~SPOOL files, but you are strongly advised to preserve all the files so far mentioned. The other files in the \news\ directory contain threading information only, and can be recreated at any time by a newsbase rebuild.

The \Program Files\turnpike\*.ini files contain useful information, but nothing which cannot be recreated by working ones way through all the setup process again. The \Program Files\turnpike\turnpike.usr file is more important. It contains information about login names, email names etc. If you lose this file, you can recreate it (minus a lot of information) provided you know your site secret. If you lose this file and your site secret you will be unable to access your mail database.

The \Program Files\turnpike\calls.cst file contains your call cost records.

The \Program Files\turnpike\user001 directory contains the INI file for Turnpike and a USERNEWS file which records details of your newsreading. By default, your signature files live here as well. None of this is essential information, but it is as well to back it up.

In general, the advice is to backup everything which has changed since the last backup (you can use the MSDOS "archive" bit to detect this). The information above should only be seen as guide to what you risk losing if you fail to make a sufficiently wide-ranging backup.

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Can I run a mailing list?
Some people used to use the "alias expansion" features of KA9Q to run a simple-minded mailing list, whereby incoming email would be automatically exploded into multiple copies and immediately resent onwards. This is not possible with Turnpike.

It is possible to build lists of addressees and select them en masse from the address book. This is a good technique for outgoing email which has to be regularly sent to the same group of people.

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How do I write kill rules with wildcards?
If you want to kill all articles whose subject line includes the letters FAQ (an unwise move) then you need to enter *FAQ in the subject field of the kill dialog.

In most of these fields "*" has the simple meaning of "any number of characters", similarly "?" means a single character.

Note that there is always an (invisible) trailing "*" on all of these rules, and the rules are not case sensitive.

Wildcards do not work in the author field. If you wish to kill all authors called Richard (no matter which site they write from) then you will need a custom rule of the form:

/richard/a

However! if you write a custom rule (and there is a description of the format of such rules in the Help - they are regular expressions such as you might find in programs like grep), then you must take note that "*" means "apply the last match zero or more times", which is not the same meaning as in the simple rule at all. In a custom rule you need to use ".*" to have the meaning of "match any number of characters", but you can probably avoid wildcards altogether because the matches apply anywhere in the string, unless you "anchor" it to the start. This is the reason the "/richard/" above does not need a ".*".

Can I post to mail and news at the same time?
Some people consider it "polite" to send an email message at the same time as they reply to a Usenet posting. The idea seems to be that their reply might otherwise be missed.

However, it is not uncommon to deal with email before reading Usenet, and (especially if people forget to indicate that their reply was both mailed and posted) this means that the reply may be dealt with on the basis that there is now a one-to-one private conversation going on. Later it will be discovered that it is necessary to reply publicly as well... and this can be a major waste of time and effort.

The reception of "courtesy" copies of Usenet articles annoys the developers of Turnpike a great deal, and they are far from alone in this. Thus, they are extremely reluctant to implement anything to make this practice easier.

In the meantime, if you wish to post to Usenet and also to post the article by email - and there are indeed a few occasions when it is the correct thing to do - then it is simply necessary to employ a handful of extra keystrokes and cut and paste the answer from the email copy to the Usenet copy.

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How do I search messages for a particular message-id?
Use the Advanced tab in the Search messages dialog to set an IMAP search string

HEADER MESSAGE-ID "< abc@xyz >"

where < abc@xyz > is the message-id to search for.

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What's a good folder rule to trap spam?
One way of coping with spam is to route it to a dedicated folder to be dealt with at your leisure. Unfortunately there is no rule that is guaranteed to trap spam and only spam. However, the following rule gives good results. It relies on the fact that a lot of spam is not address to you personally in the header. Create a spam folder then and give it a custom accept rule

!/^(to|cc):.*fred@example\.com/h

replacing fred@example.com with your actual email address, putting a \ before each dot.

This rule will trap any message that does not have your address in the To: or Cc: line.

The rule will fail to trap spam that does mention your address in the header. The rule will also erroneously trap legitimate mail that has been Bcc'ed to you or that is from a mailing that you have not told Turnpike about. In this case you may wish to add reject rules for specific addresses to keep them out of your spam folder.

On a Multi-user system how do I let my PA deal with my mail while I'm on holiday?
Give your PA access to some or all of your folders.

Right click on the folder, Properties, Access.

Now add your PA to the list with appropriate rights,

e.g. Read. Your PA will now be able to see these folders by looking in the Turnpike Neighbourhood under your folder. Upon your return from holiday you can remove these rights as required.

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I want to save space by removing attachments from messages, how do I find them?
Sort on size by clicking on the size column. Large messages probably contain attachments.

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How do I create a Turnpike 5 style Mailroom view?
Search all email, but don't set any criteria. This will find all the mail. Save the search as "Mailroom view".

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How can I find all mail from a particular person?
Either

Right click on a message from that person and select "Search On|From" or;
Start a new search (Tools|Search) and type the email address of that person in the From field, then click "Search".

How do I find all correspondence with a particular person?

Either

Open the Address book, find that person in the address book, right click on that person and select "Messages" or;
Start a new search (Tools|Search), select "Specific user" from the "Search in:" field, select that person from the list, then click "Search".

Some messages in my search results appear dim. Why?
Deleted messages are displayed dimmed to distinguish them from other messages. By default, searches include deleted messages. If you don't want your search to include deleted messages, click the Status tab in the Search window and clear the "Include deleted messages in search" check box.

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I have saved a search but can't remember the criteria I used for the search. How can I find this out?
Open the saved search folder, then select "Tools|Redo Search". The search window will be displayed with the same criteria as the saved search.

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I have found the newsgroup article I was looking for using search.
How can I get Turnpike to show the rest of the thread for that article?
Right click on the article in the search results and select "Find in containing folder". Turnpike will open the newsgroup containing the article, expand the relevant thread, and select the article for you.

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I have forgotten my Demon login password but Connect still knows it. In the past I could see it when connecting if the Debug Script option was set, but now it just shows *****.
How can I find out the password?
You can't. In Turnpike Six all online passwords are masked with ***** where they would appear on the screen or in log files. This applies to ISP login, POP3 accounts and any passwords that may be required for news or SMTP servers. The change improves the security of your passwords particularly now that you can set up automatic logging.

You will need to phone the Demon Helpdesk and ask them to reset your password.

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When I look at Internet Service Provider Details, it shows my Demon password as 10 stars but my password isn't that long.
The Demon login still works so what is going on?
This is all correct. Connect and Turnpike always represent any password, which has previously been entered into a dialog or property sheet, with a FIXED number of stars. Revealing the actual number of characters would help anyone trying to hack or guess your passwords. While you are entering a new password (or the existing password for your Turnpike login) one star appears per character as you type.

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I use one ISP connection normally, but occasionally need to dial a different ISP instead. With 2 connections set up it is easy enough to select the other one, but I keep forgetting to switch back afterwards.
Can Connect help with this?
Yes. The new Auto Select feature is intended to select different dialup connections for different times of day, but you can configure it to use the same one for all 3 charging periods. Make this the connection to your normal ISP, then check all 3 checkboxes: On, now & at restart in the Connect Dialog - this will select your normal connection and grey out the connections list & buttons. Whenever you want to dial the other ISP once only, go into the Connect Dialog and uncheck now - the list will then reselect the last connection you selected manually (if that isn't the one you want the first time you can change it).

After you have dialled out once (or even if you don't), Auto Select will resume automatically as soon as both: the Connect dialog is dismissed, and you are no longer connected.

As a variation on the above, to continue using the unusual connection until you close down connect (i.e. for several more dialups) uncheck On instead (now clears too). But leave at restart checked in order to use the normal connection again tomorrow.

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I have a cable phone line so I can't use the Demon Premier Connect 0844 numbers for cheaper calls, but I would like to see the reminders when the cost of a call is changing at 8am, 6pm or midnight.
Is this possible?
Yes. Configure Auto Select (as in the previous answer) to use the same connection at all times. Then adjust the options to get the reminders you want, and/or the charge period indication in the status bar. If you only ever use one connection anyway, having Auto Select On or not makes no difference, provided you have checked Always for the reminders.

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When you say Sent with a date criterion on the Date tab that will still include incoming or outgoing mail: the sent date tested is either when you sent a mail or someone else sent a mail to you. To include Outgoing only mail you should select this on the Status tab.
during the previous 1 month refers to calendar months so if it is Sept. now then everything since 1st Aug. If you meant exactly a month put previous 30 or 31 days instead.

Note: You could have put previous 0 months which would mean just since 1st Sept. Previous n days works similarly, with 0 meaning today since midnight, 1 to include yesterday etc.

I am not given the choice of where to Install Turnpike Six,
it always installs it in the same place.
If you are installing Turnpike Six for the first time, then you will be given the choice where to install it, provided that you did not leave unticked the box after the readme1st "Choose setup options".

Once Turnpike Six is installed, further alterations or updates to it will always be made to the same place on disk. This is so that the installer can follow what components you have installed and where. It is in any case not possible to run more that one copy of Turnpike, from different disk locations, on the same machine/operating system.

If you wish to change where Turnpike is installed, then you will need to uninstall it from its current location and then reinstall it elsewhere. The uninstallation will never delete your files, such as mail and new database files, it will only delete program files that it had once installed. Depending one where you were using database files from, you may wish to copy those from the old location to the new, see the advice in the Turnpike help files for Moving your Turnpike (to machine).

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When upgrading from an earlier version of Turnpike Six, the installer produced an error message, that if this error persisted I should contact the supplier.
I now think that I have software that has only been partially upgraded.
Run the installer again & choose "Repair" from the options "Modify", "Repair" or "Remove" that are offered. If the repair succeeds then all should now be well. If the installer continues to fail then please let us know.

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When I run the installer from "Add/Remove Programs" in the Windows "Control Panel", it fails saying "Need installer file data2.cab, which is not available".
If you installed Turnpike Six from a self extracting .exe, that is done internally by first extracting the installer files to a temporary directory. At the end of installation, the temporary directory is removed.

If you later run the installer from Add/Remove programs, and it needs access the temporary files, then you may get the error you describe.

What you will have to do in order to perform a Repair, or to add a new Component, is to run the Turnpike Six installer again from the self extracting.exe

Only when a Turnpike Six installer is run in a form other than a self extracting .exe, will it be able to Add or Repair from Add/Remove programs.

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However, from time to time, the installer may fail to close an application in time, or some unexpected circumstance may lock a file. In those cases the installer tells you.

The correct thing to do normally is to choose "Reboot", the installer will then arrange to complete installation during a Windows Restart, just as it does for shared files. It would be unwise to choose "Ignore" unless you had special reason for knowing that the locked file did not need to be changed at all, "Cancel" could leave your installation incomplete or inconsistent.

When I tried to Remove Turnpike Six, the installer asked me whether to delete certain shared files, is this normal and what should I do?
Windows has a mechanism for keeping a count of the number of programs using a shared file. This is intended so that if a program is later uninstalled, it does not remove the shared components used by other programs. The installers are able using the count to implement a sort of "The last one out switch the lights off" policy.

Unfortunately, not all programs follow the rules for maintaining the reference counts. If the count is wrong then uninstalling one "innocent" application may break many others, not just the one with the "guilty" installer. In order to reduce the risk of this, while not preventing shared components ever being removed, the installer prompts before removing a shared file - even though the count indicates that removal will be safe.

The choice as to whether to remove the shared file becomes yours, when the count indicates there are no other uses. You may choose to remove it, a little disk space will be saved and your computer will be kept tidier. You may choose to retain it, computer disks are a lot larger (and a lot more cluttered) than they used to be. You could regard the question as a warning that if you later have difficulty with another application no longer able to run, that you should reinstall it. Only if you have had that kind of trouble might you then think to avoid removing a particular shared component during future uninstalls.

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Further Questions and Answers
The other support options open to you are listed on the product support page.

In particular, the newsgroup demon.ip.support.turnpike is used for Turnpike announcements, support and user discussions. Here you can discuss Turnpike with other users. This is monitored by the Turnpike development team.

Naturally, email with corrections and suggestions for improvements and alterations to the FAQ are always welcome:mailto:faq@turnpike.com2

Not every question can be answered here. There are other independent Turnpike FAQ websites, for example: http://www.plainfaqs.org.uk/

Disclaimer: THUS makes no warranties, representations or undertakings about any of the content of the web site accessed by this hypertext link (including, without limitation, any as to the quality, accuracy, completeness or fitness for any particular purpose of such content). THUS does not recommend, certify, endorse or approve the content of this third party site, nor will THUS have any liability in connection with it (including, but not limited to, liability arising out of any allegation that the content infringes any law or the rights of any person or entity). In no way should the existence of a link be interpreted to mean that this third party site has a relationship with THUS.

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