HOWTO_Powergrab

What is Powergrab?

• Powergrab is a Newsgroup reader and binary downloader for Windows. Development has stopped and their website has gone down (http://cosmicwolf.com). However, I was able to get my hands on a release from 2002 (the latest 2.6-rc1) and decided to test it in Wine.

Getting Powergrab

• CosmicWolf, the website where Powergrab was hosted, has gone down as have the files it was hosting. The files are now hosted on one of my personal sites.
• Get Powergrab 2.6-RC1

Dependencies

• For installation you will only need the latest Wine (tested with >0.9.6).
• You will also need unzip for the archive.

Installing

• To install you will first need a default Wine installation. Then you should make a directory in your Program Files for Powergrab:

 mkdir ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Powergrab

• Then you will need to move over the powergrab archive and unzip it.
• Afterwards, while in the Powergrab directory, you will have to make two more directories otherwise Powergrab will fail saying it cannot save files:

 mkdir DATA
 mkdir MESSAGES

Note: Both are case sensitive

Running Powergrab

• After installing you will have to make a directory in which all Newsgroup messages and binaries will be held. For example:

mkdir ~/.wine/drive_c/newsgroups

• Afterwards you can now run Powergrab in your Installation directory with the command:

wine POWRGRAB.EXE

• A configuration window should pop up the first time you run it which should be filled out.

• After proper configuration you can right click on the Newsgroups window and select Server Newsgroups List where you can choose which newsgroups to subscribe to.
• After clicking on a newsgroup a Save-To window should pop up and you should choose the directory you used earlier.

• To update a Newsgroup just right click on it and hit scan.

Troubleshooting

Concerns or Compliments? Please use the Discussion section.