Mail Scanner Irratic

system · 2007-05-03T16:08:41.000Z

I have been having a horrible time with the mail scanner. For no reason, the mail scanner icon disappears and my mail is no longer scanned. I even did a total reformat a couple days ago thinking this might solve the problem.

My outbound mail is scanned, noted by the email tag as well as the “last
scanned” in the Internet Mail provider. I wish I could say the same for incoming mail. The icon is not there, there is no email certification tag and there is no
notation in Internet Mail that any incoming mail is being scanned. It does
show the outbound mail scanned though.

To rectify this, I have paused / terminated the service in avast! Pro itself
and also have changed the properties in Windows services. I have set it to
automatic, but every once in a while it reverts back to manual. I have also
set it to restart under the recovery tab.

Sometimes the mail scan icon is there and then it will disappear. I was wondering if I might have a corrupt install, but I have downloaded the latest install file from the site. Tech support has forwarded my request to the author of the mail plugin, but I was hoping someone on the forum would have an idea.

I’ve found that the only way I can get the mail scanner to resume, is to use the repair function in Add/Remove; but then I have to always restart. I cannot tell you how much time I’ve wasted on this and it is getting beyond the point of ridiculous! Is there a setting I need to change? I don’t understand why it won’t keep on working. When it works, it’s great, but … (you know the rest of the story!)

I am at a loss as to what to try next, so any immediate help would be
greatly appreciated.

Lyla

DavidR · 2007-05-03T16:26:17.000Z

First the email icon is only there when it is actually scanning email and then it clears.

What is your OS ?
What is your email program ?
What is your firewall ?

Have (or did) you another AV installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?

What is your ISP and do you have to use SSL/TLS for your email ?

Lisandro · 2007-05-03T16:32:25.000Z

Lyla post:1:

The icon is not there, there is no email certification tag and there is no notation in Internet Mail that any incoming mail is being scanned.

Is Internet Mail provider (and/or Outlook plugin) set to do so?

Lyla post:1:

To rectify this, I have paused / terminated the service in avast! Pro itself and also have changed the properties in Windows services. I have set it to automatic, but every once in a while it reverts back to manual. I have also set it to restart under the recovery tab.

This service is manual, not automatic. It will be started when your computer needs it for the first time to scan any email/news. There is no need to set it to automatic.

system · 2007-05-03T17:18:00.000Z

Thanks for the prompt responses! I was trying to figure out how to answer with the quote! LOL

Anyway, I am using XP Home SP2 with IncrediMail 2902 with Windows FW. I do realize that the scanning icon is only present when mail is coming in and, for the most part, love the way it works!

I did have Kaspersky Internet Security installed and uninstalled through Add/Remove followed by their uninstall utility in safe mode.

My ISP is EarthLink … gotta love that dialup!

I do have avast! Pro set to tag my emails correctly.

Thanks so much for the help. I look forward to your answer and hopefully, fixing this so I can stay with with avast!

BTW, it is working flawlessly at the moment, after doing another repair / restart again! ???

system · 2007-05-03T17:31:06.000Z

Well, now after telling you it’s working, I turn around and it’s not! This is really getting frustrating! I guess it’s time to repair again!!! LOL

DavidR · 2007-05-03T18:25:31.000Z

Was this the tool you used to remove Kaspersky ?
KIS6 Removal - http://support.kaspersky.com/downloads/kis6/kiskav6remove.zip.

When this problem occurs what avast processes are in the Windows Task Manager, they begin with ash or asw, see image.

What happens when you try to check your email, are there any error messages, if so can you post the complete text ?

Personally with the changes you have been making to attempt a resolution, I would suggest a clean install.

It would probably be best to download the latest version of avast http://www.avast.com/eng/programs.html and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again. Use that when you reinstall.

Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, find it here and save it to your HDD so you can find it later.

Now, uninstall, reboot, run the uninstall utility, reboot, install, reboot.

system · 2007-05-04T11:43:04.000Z

Yes, this is the Kaspersky tool that was used.

I have all 5 of the avast services running in task mgr, whether mail scanner is working correctly or not.

I get no error messages

After doing exactly as suggested, at first start I have no mail scanner icon in the systray, nor is it scanning incoming mail by the email headers. It will however, scan all outgoing mail and at that time, the mail scan icon is visible in the systray. I also checked the avast services and they are as they should be. I have even used the repair, which made no difference either.

I guess we’re half-way there!!!

So, at this time, incoming mail is not being scanned, which is not a good thing, IMHO. Please advise ASAP and thanks in advance!

system · 2007-05-04T12:39:06.000Z

After researching several posts, I have now enabled the mail scan tag in IMAP & NNTP tabs in Internet Mail as well as POP & SMTP. I thought this might make a difference, as stated in one of the posts. Still no incoming mail is being scanned. I have checked the email headers; there is nothing there that tells me email is being scanned either.

I’m at a loss here as what to try next. I’m starting to think that avast will simply not work for me. The only thing left is to try the Home version instead of Pro. Would that make a difference?

Thanks for all the help in the past and looking forward to a final resolution to this ASAP!

DavidR · 2007-05-04T13:03:55.000Z

I going to state the blindingly obvious but have you unchecked the inbound scan in the Internet Mail, Customise, POP3 ?

I’m at a loss as to why is scans outbound and not inbound if it can scan one it should be able to scan the other on less there is something about the email you receive.

Personally I would not use the ‘Insert note into clean message’ (if that is what you mean by the mail scan tag) with Incredimail, there have been lots of posts in the forums about Incredimail and the clean note problem for some if just doesn’t work and can cause malformed text layout in incredimail because avast inserts a clean note in the text and html parts of incredimail. For some reason that is something that can confuse incredimail’s layout. Though this should have no impact in the not scanning inbound email.

Is this a proper POP3 email account or a webmail account that you import into incredimail ?

Has avast ever scanned inbound email ?

What email port do you use in the incredimail email account settings for POP3 server ?
I have use my OE email account settings as an example, there should be a corresponding one in incredimail.

system · 2007-05-04T14:03:45.000Z

Hi David!

Well, this is weird! I’m beyond confused! ??? I have all email protocols checked for incoming mail, both clean and infected messages. After doing a repair, all is working as it should, including the incoming mail. I’m a happy camper now!

It’s just a bit unnerving; 'cause I hope this isn’t short-lived, as it has been in the past, but for now I am using the Pro version and all seems to be going well.

Thanks for everyone’s help, not to mention patience!

Have a great weekend! Hope you don’t hear from me again in the near future (don’t take that personally!!!) ;D

DavidR · 2007-05-04T15:29:27.000Z

Your welcome, it is very frustrating when something for no apparent reason stops working.

system · 2007-05-04T17:58:49.000Z

Well, that certainly didn’t last long!!! :-[ We are not scanning incoming mail, again! >:( I did a quick test to myself and what do ya know? The icon pops right up in the systray, like it should. When receiving the email, there is the certification tag for the outbound message. I simply do not understand why I am having such a horrible time getting my incoming mail to scan! ???

I did find one thing: when I manually stop the mail (at this time, everything was working great), but when bringing it in again, there is no mail scan icon at all. Also, I have checked the headers and my email is definitely NOT being scanned!

It’s starting to look like this is just something I have to live with or move on, as I cannot have my email not scanned by anything.

Please advise ASAP!

Thanks!

DavidR · 2007-05-04T18:16:34.000Z

I asked some questions in my previous post which you omitted since everything was going OK, so perhaps and see if the answers might help me with a little more information, because frankly I can’t understand what is going on. An intermittent fault is the hardest to resolve.

alanrf · 2007-05-04T18:44:49.000Z

Incredimail has built in Webmail (like Hotmail/Yahoo) to POP conversion.

By default avast cannot scan this mail and it cannot scan any email accounts where Incredimail has to use a secure connection to get the mail (for example GMail). So if you have any of these accounts along with a regular ISP POP mail account you will get a mixed bag of results when you look at your mail.

DavidR · 2007-05-04T19:17:34.000Z

Thanks Alan,

Now we have wait for these very questions that I asked in an earlier post.

system · 2007-05-04T20:37:12.000Z

DavidR post:9:

I going to state the blindingly obvious but have you unchecked the inbound scan in the Internet Mail, Customise, POP3 ?
yes, I have all the email protocol boxes checked

I’m at a loss as to why is scans outbound and not inbound if it can scan one it should be able to scan the other on less there is something about the email you receive.

Personally I would not use the ‘Insert note into clean message’ (if that is what you mean by the mail scan tag) with Incredimail, there have been lots of posts in the forums about Incredimail and the clean note problem for some if just doesn’t work and can cause malformed text layout in incredimail because avast inserts a clean note in the text and html parts of incredimail. For some reason that is something that can confuse incredimail’s layout. Though this should have no impact in the not scanning inbound email.

Is this a proper POP3 email account or a webmail account that you import into incredimail ?
This is a normal POP3 account and nothing imported from webmail

Has avast ever scanned inbound email ?
Yes, it has scanned before. Seems like when I manually stop the incoming mail and restart it again, that’s when it doesn’t show up. This is when I have to go to the repair function and restart.

What email port do you use in the incredimail email account settings for POP3 server ?
My port settings are the normal ones / POP3 server 110, SMTP 25

I have use my OE email account settings as an example, there should be a corresponding one in incredimail.

DavidR · 2007-05-04T21:50:57.000Z

Your answers leave me even more puzzled as there is nothing that is an obvious deal breaker.

When they aren’t being scanned I presume that the emails are getting through OK or is email blocked ?

Because of your concern about not having your email scanned you could take some proactive action.
How many email accounts do you have ?

If only one You could try the free version of MailWasher (I use the Pro paid version for multiple email acounts), it is primarily an anti-spam program and it downloads a very small part of your email for analysis and filtering of spam. It displays this small part in text mode and doesn’t download any attachments, so it if fairly safe (I exclude mailwasher.exe from avast email scans).

Any email that you think it suspicious, you just flag it for deletion, once you have done that and click process mail, it deletes the email from the email server and calls your email program and you only download what is left, your genuine emails. I love this program as I too am a dial-up user so I don’t have to download ‘all’ email to filter spam or suspect emails. This also means avast only has to scan the remainder (assuming we get it to work).

Something that might help,though I’m not entirely sure as if it isn’t scanning effectively it wouldn’t be loging, but won’t hurt.

alanrf post:6:

It might prove useful to create (for a while) a more detailed avast! log of your mail connections.

You can get the mailscanner to log your connections by editing the avast4.ini file (in Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA folder).

In the section headed:
[MailScanner]
add the line:

Log=20
and save the updated file.

Then read in some mail to generate the logging information.
The log will be in Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\log\ashmaisv.log
Before posting the log you should mask any personally identifiable information.

alanrf · 2007-05-05T07:30:41.000Z

The old memory cells are sparking intermittently on this one.

I think I recall before going through the way some of the messages are handled in Incredimail and noting that the message format makes it just about impossible for avast to insert the “clean mail” messages. However, as I recall, those messages should still contain the X-Antivirus headers denoting that they had been scanned by avast.

There can be times when avast cannot even insert the X-Antivirus headers (and I have had to work with some developers to make that possible).

I confess though that this old email professional has a somewhat prejudiced view of Incredimail and I have yet to be persuaded to give this piece of software houseroom on my system to test it. I have unfortunate experiences of the efforts to remove this thing from the systems of those I support who have (in my view) been unwise enough to install it (the last only a couple of months ago).

DavidR · 2007-05-05T12:35:51.000Z

Yes an oldie but not so goodie, insertion of clean notes in incredimail was fraught with problems, it just can’t seem to correctly format the email with the text element (or part) of the email also being shown as they effectively get two clean notes one for the html part and one for the text element.

Other email programs seem to be able to cope with the insertion of the clean notes in mime html/text email, but many incredimail users have reported problems.

Unfortunately this problem with clean notes I doubt has any bearing on this non-scanning of inbound port 110 email.

My views of Incredimail are I suspect the same as yours I don’t need fancy emails with emoticons, etc. just a functional email client.

@ Lyla
Do you still have Outlook Express or another email program like Thunderbird, that you can test to see if this problem is common for all inbound email ?

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