The instructions below are to restore a full backup. You may also be able to recover deleted messages or specific message folders if you do not need to restore a full backup.

These instructions are for Version 5 or later. See our knowledgebase for instructions for earlier versions.

If you just need to restore a database backup into an existing installation of VPOP3, see steps 4 to 7 below.

To restore a full backup of VPOP3:

1.If VPOP3 is already installed, make sure VPOP3 is shut down before starting the restore process

2.If VPOP3 is not already installer or will not run, reinstall VPOP3 into the location where you restored VPOP3. This should reinstall the PostgreSQL database system. Do not start VPOP3 at this time

3.Open a command prompt, and go to the VPOP3 directory

4.If you are restoring the backup over an existing VPOP3 database (especially if the database files are damaged) you will need to DROP the database first. To do this, run:
pgsql\bin\dropdb -U postgres -p <port number> vpop3
When it prompts for the password enter the PostgreSQL master password - the default is pgsqlpass. (<port number> is usually 5433)

5.Run: pgsql\bin\pg_restore -U postgres -p <port number> -v -C -d postgres <backupfile>
where <backupfile> is the backup file you want to restore (usually DBBACK-<number>.DMP). If there are multiple backups available, look at the file timestamps to see which the latest one is. <port number> is usually 5433.
When it prompts for a password enter the PostgreSQL master password - the default is pgsqlpass. Note that during this step you may see a couple of errors which are not important: there may be an error about the database already existing, and also an error that the 'plpgsql' language is already installed. (Each of these errors may have several lines in the output). If there are lots of errors, then there may be a problem and you should contact support for help.

6.Start VPOP3