All Unread Messages are loaded into Inbox As Read

[rickster]

I am using Windoes Mail on Vista-x64. My mail account is with AOL and
Windows Mail is configured to use it as an IMAP server. There are no
problems sending or receiving e-mails except that all e-mail coming into the
Inbox are never in BOLD to indicate they are unread. They are all loaded as
if they were read. I can manually set an e-mail to Unread and in that case
it will hold the message in BOLD indicating it is unread and it stays that
way even if I close and reopen Windows mail. This started happening
recently and I'm not sure what triggered it. Any help would be appreciated!

 

[mac]

I am using Windoes Mail on Vista-x64. My mail account is with AOL and
Windows Mail is configured to use it as an IMAP server. There are no
problems sending or receiving e-mails except that all e-mail coming into
the
Inbox are never in BOLD to indicate they are unread. They are all loaded
as
if they were read. I can manually set an e-mail to Unread and in that
case
it will hold the message in BOLD indicating it is unread and it stays that
way even if I close and reopen Windows mail. This started happening
recently and I'm not sure what triggered it. Any help would be
appreciated!

Not particularly conversant with the workings of AOL mail.

Did you check at your AOL online mailbox to see if the messages are still
showing as unread prior to downloading them?

Two possible causes spring to mind:

1) You have set up a mail rule that is marking all mail as read?
Tools>message rules.

2) Someone else as access to your online Account PW/UN?

 

[mac]

2) Someone else as access to your online Account PW/UN?

The above does not hold to be possible, at least with tests that I just
performed with my online mailbox, so ignore that one.

 

[rickster]

Never set up any rules to mark mail as read. If I go to AOL mail via my
browser instead of Windows Mail, the messages are marked as Unread and in
BOLD there. So that would also eliminate somebody having my password. It's
got to be somethign with Windows Mail. I am going to delete my Windows Mail
AOL account and re-establish it again to see if that helps. Thanks for your
reply!

I am using Windoes Mail on Vista-x64. My mail account is with AOL and
Windows Mail is configured to use it as an IMAP server. There are no
problems sending or receiving e-mails except that all e-mail coming into
the
Inbox are never in BOLD to indicate they are unread. They are all loaded
as
if they were read. I can manually set an e-mail to Unread and in that
case
it will hold the message in BOLD indicating it is unread and it stays that
way even if I close and reopen Windows mail. This started happening
recently and I'm not sure what triggered it. Any help would be
appreciated!

Not particularly conversant with the workings of AOL mail.

Did you check at your AOL online mailbox to see if the messages are still
showing as unread prior to downloading them?

Two possible causes spring to mind:

1) You have set up a mail rule that is marking all mail as read?
Tools>message rules.

2) Someone else as access to your online Account PW/UN?


--
Regards Steve.
MS-MVP. MAIL. [DTS] UK.
http://www.getsafeonline.org/
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/citizenship/safeandsecure/parentadvice/default.mspx

 

[rickster]

Deleting and adding back the AOL -mail account did not fix the problem. All
new incoming e-mails continue to load as READ.

Never set up any rules to mark mail as read. If I go to AOL mail via my
browser instead of Windows Mail, the messages are marked as Unread and in
BOLD there. So that would also eliminate somebody having my password. It's
got to be somethign with Windows Mail. I am going to delete my Windows Mail
AOL account and re-establish it again to see if that helps. Thanks for your
reply!

I am using Windoes Mail on Vista-x64. My mail account is with AOL and
Windows Mail is configured to use it as an IMAP server. There are no
problems sending or receiving e-mails except that all e-mail coming into
the
Inbox are never in BOLD to indicate they are unread. They are all loaded
as
if they were read. I can manually set an e-mail to Unread and in that
case
it will hold the message in BOLD indicating it is unread and it stays that
way even if I close and reopen Windows mail. This started happening
recently and I'm not sure what triggered it. Any help would be
appreciated!

Not particularly conversant with the workings of AOL mail.

Did you check at your AOL online mailbox to see if the messages are still
showing as unread prior to downloading them?

Two possible causes spring to mind:

1) You have set up a mail rule that is marking all mail as read?
Tools>message rules.

2) Someone else as access to your online Account PW/UN?


--
Regards Steve.
MS-MVP. MAIL. [DTS] UK.
http://www.getsafeonline.org/
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/citizenship/safeandsecure/parentadvice/default.mspx

 

[Gary VanderMolen [MVP]]

Which antivirus are you running? Some of them cause problems with
Windows Mail over time.

Do you have any other mail account besides AOL, and if so, does
it have the same issue?

--
Gary VanderMolen, Microsoft MVP (Mail)
Microsoft MVP program: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

Deleting and adding back the AOL -mail account did not fix the problem. All
new incoming e-mails continue to load as READ.

Never set up any rules to mark mail as read. If I go to AOL mail via my
browser instead of Windows Mail, the messages are marked as Unread and in
BOLD there. So that would also eliminate somebody having my password. It's
got to be somethign with Windows Mail. I am going to delete my Windows Mail
AOL account and re-establish it again to see if that helps. Thanks for your
reply!

I am using Windoes Mail on Vista-x64. My mail account is with AOL and
Windows Mail is configured to use it as an IMAP server. There are no
problems sending or receiving e-mails except that all e-mail coming into
the
Inbox are never in BOLD to indicate they are unread. They are all loaded
as
if they were read. I can manually set an e-mail to Unread and in that
case
it will hold the message in BOLD indicating it is unread and it stays that
way even if I close and reopen Windows mail. This started happening
recently and I'm not sure what triggered it. Any help would be
appreciated!


Not particularly conversant with the workings of AOL mail.

Did you check at your AOL online mailbox to see if the messages are still
showing as unread prior to downloading them?

Two possible causes spring to mind:

1) You have set up a mail rule that is marking all mail as read?
Tools>message rules.

2) Someone else as access to your online Account PW/UN?


--
Regards Steve.
MS-MVP. MAIL. [DTS] UK.
http://www.getsafeonline.org/
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/citizenship/safeandsecure/parentadvice/default.mspx

 

[rickster]

I have McAfee Security Center and I've disabled the e-mail and IM filtering
to no avail. I'll try disabling the Virus Scan and see if that does
anything. I have no other e-mil accounts besides the AOL account. What's
somewhat peculiar is that when I first launch Windows mail it loads up the
Inbox with new messages and they are all identified as Read. If a new e-mail
comes in while I have Windows mail open, it comes in as Unread (bold). Then
after some period of time which I haven't measured yet (but several minutes
for sure), it gets marked as Read without it ever being viewed or opened.

I suspected it was the READ setting that allows you set a time limit for
when a message automaticallt turns to Read when viewed for "n" seconds but I
disabled that and it did nothing. I'm wondering if it's because at one time
I had the AOL account set up as a POP3 server and then switched to IMAP. I
deleted that POP server account but I wonder if it's still "hanging aroud"
and intercepting mail?. I wish there was a way to uninstall and or repair
Windows Mail. Something's just flakey...

Any suggestions would be appreciated...

Which antivirus are you running? Some of them cause problems with
Windows Mail over time.

Do you have any other mail account besides AOL, and if so, does
it have the same issue?

--
Gary VanderMolen, Microsoft MVP (Mail)
Microsoft MVP program: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

Deleting and adding back the AOL -mail account did not fix the problem. All
new incoming e-mails continue to load as READ.

Never set up any rules to mark mail as read. If I go to AOL mail via my
browser instead of Windows Mail, the messages are marked as Unread and in
BOLD there. So that would also eliminate somebody having my password. It's
got to be somethign with Windows Mail. I am going to delete my Windows Mail
AOL account and re-establish it again to see if that helps. Thanks for your
reply!

:


I am using Windoes Mail on Vista-x64. My mail account is with AOL and
Windows Mail is configured to use it as an IMAP server. There are no
problems sending or receiving e-mails except that all e-mail coming into
the
Inbox are never in BOLD to indicate they are unread. They are all loaded
as
if they were read. I can manually set an e-mail to Unread and in that
case
it will hold the message in BOLD indicating it is unread and it stays that
way even if I close and reopen Windows mail. This started happening
recently and I'm not sure what triggered it. Any help would be
appreciated!


Not particularly conversant with the workings of AOL mail.

Did you check at your AOL online mailbox to see if the messages are still
showing as unread prior to downloading them?

Two possible causes spring to mind:

1) You have set up a mail rule that is marking all mail as read?
Tools>message rules.

2) Someone else as access to your online Account PW/UN?


--
Regards Steve.
MS-MVP. MAIL. [DTS] UK.
http://www.getsafeonline.org/
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/citizenship/safeandsecure/parentadvice/default.mspx

.

 

[rickster]

So I took my problem to the extreme... I did a clean reinstall of Vista,
configured Windows Mail for my AOL IMAP server and before I installed McAfee
I launched Mail. Same problem!!! E-mails get loaded into the Inbox as READ.
UGH!

Here's an interesting twist... Any e-mails that are deemed as Junk are
automatically put i the Junk folder and they ALWAYS stay marked as UNREAD!

Also noticing that once Mail is open, new incoming e-mail stays marked as
UNREAD for an extended period of time ie. in one test an e-mail 1 arrived
at 7:22. E-mail 2 arrived at 7:52 at which time both E-mail 1 and E-mail 2
were automatically marked as READ although I had never opened either of them.

I am out of ideas... Any thoughts would be apprecaited.

You could try a system restore to a date before this
started happening.

To be sure it isn't McAfee, you will have to completely
uninstall McAfee using their removal tool and reinstall
with the scanning option turned off.

McAfee removal tool:
http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=107083&lc=1033

Details why scanning isn't necessary:
'OETips' (http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3) 'Why you don't need
your anti-virus to scan your email - A Cloudeight Information Avenune
Tutorial'
(http://thundercloud.net/infoave/tutorials/email-scanning/index.htm)

 

[rickster]

I ran some additional tests with Windows Mail open on my desktop...

I sent several e-mails to myself every 3-4 minutes with the first one
arriving in my inbox at 8:02 AM. At this point I had about 6 e-mails sitting
in my Inbox and correctly marked as UNREAD. At about 8:20, I shutdown Mail
and launched it again. My 6 e-mails were still correctly marked as UNREAD.
I began watching my Inbox at 8:30. At 8:32 before my eyes they all switched
to being READ ---one after the other... I repeated this test and the same
thing happened again.

It appears as though some process is running 30 minutes after a new e-mail
first arrives in my Inbox and it is changing their status to READ for no
apparent reason.

Does anybody have any suggestions and/or ideas on how to trap what is
causing this?

So I took my problem to the extreme... I did a clean reinstall of Vista,
configured Windows Mail for my AOL IMAP server and before I installed McAfee
I launched Mail. Same problem!!! E-mails get loaded into the Inbox as READ.
UGH!

Here's an interesting twist... Any e-mails that are deemed as Junk are
automatically put i the Junk folder and they ALWAYS stay marked as UNREAD!

Also noticing that once Mail is open, new incoming e-mail stays marked as
UNREAD for an extended period of time ie. in one test an e-mail 1 arrived
at 7:22. E-mail 2 arrived at 7:52 at which time both E-mail 1 and E-mail 2
were automatically marked as READ although I had never opened either of them.

I am out of ideas... Any thoughts would be apprecaited.

 

[Gary VanderMolen [MVP]]

Needless to say, in my 3+ years of fixing Windows Mail problems,
I've never seen one like yours.

All I can suggest is try Windows Live Mail and see if it exhibits the
same problem for you.
http://download.live.com/wlmail

--
Gary VanderMolen, Microsoft MVP (Mail)
Microsoft MVP program: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

I ran some additional tests with Windows Mail open on my desktop...

I sent several e-mails to myself every 3-4 minutes with the first one
arriving in my inbox at 8:02 AM. At this point I had about 6 e-mails sitting
in my Inbox and correctly marked as UNREAD. At about 8:20, I shutdown Mail
and launched it again. My 6 e-mails were still correctly marked as UNREAD.
I began watching my Inbox at 8:30. At 8:32 before my eyes they all switched
to being READ ---one after the other... I repeated this test and the same
thing happened again.

It appears as though some process is running 30 minutes after a new e-mail
first arrives in my Inbox and it is changing their status to READ for no
apparent reason.

Does anybody have any suggestions and/or ideas on how to trap what is
causing this?

 

[Steve Cochran]

Okay, go to Start | Search and type msconfig. Then go to the Startup items tab and see what is running at startup. Disable everything and then go to the Services tab and disable all non-Microsoft services. Then reboot and see if you have the same phenomenon.

Its a very odd issue and my only thought is that something is either tampering with the database or its some other process that is somehow triggering them to be marked read.

steve

I ran some additional tests with Windows Mail open on my desktop...

I sent several e-mails to myself every 3-4 minutes with the first one
arriving in my inbox at 8:02 AM. At this point I had about 6 e-mails sitting
in my Inbox and correctly marked as UNREAD. At about 8:20, I shutdown Mail
and launched it again. My 6 e-mails were still correctly marked as UNREAD.
I began watching my Inbox at 8:30. At 8:32 before my eyes they all switched
to being READ ---one after the other... I repeated this test and the same
thing happened again.

It appears as though some process is running 30 minutes after a new e-mail
first arrives in my Inbox and it is changing their status to READ for no
apparent reason.

Does anybody have any suggestions and/or ideas on how to trap what is
causing this?

 

[rickster]

Steve,

My last attempt to fix this was to do a clean vista install on my machine.
After loading vista and the core drivers needed on my machine, I configured
Mail and tried again before any real applications like McAfee were installed.
The problem persisted at that point.

I agree with your point at the end about something tampering with the
database and/or triggering them to be marked read but this happened after the
clean install too... Could it be Microsoft's Malware tool, Windows firewall
or some other Vista tool?

Okay, go to Start | Search and type msconfig. Then go to the Startup items tab and see what is running at startup. Disable everything and then go to the Services tab and disable all non-Microsoft services. Then reboot and see if you have the same phenomenon.

Its a very odd issue and my only thought is that something is either tampering with the database or its some other process that is somehow triggering them to be marked read.

steve

 

[Steve Cochran]

There could be some kind of indexing or internal search components doing it, but I've never seen such. I would try what I suggested and then see if some MS service might be involved.

steve

Steve,

My last attempt to fix this was to do a clean vista install on my machine.
After loading vista and the core drivers needed on my machine, I configured
Mail and tried again before any real applications like McAfee were installed.
The problem persisted at that point.

I agree with your point at the end about something tampering with the
database and/or triggering them to be marked read but this happened after the
clean install too... Could it be Microsoft's Malware tool, Windows firewall
or some other Vista tool?

 

[rickster]

Tried it... no luck---same behavior... Going to try Steve's suggestion later
today. If that doesn't work I am throwing in the towel...

Appreciate the help. Thanks!

Try this, boot into Safe Mode With Networking.
If you've never booted into safe mode, when you
boot up, at some point early on, your screen will
say to press an "F" key - what you want to press
is F8. Tap it until you get some indication that
booting has switched and will go into safe mode.
You should get a black screen with a menu.
Choose safe mode with networking. That will
load only basic Windows files. No extra programs.

Then attempt to receive mail and see if it stays
bold (unread).

 

[rickster]

Well, you definitely get the award for most perseverence and I think you are
on to something.... I disconnected from the network and my e-mails did NOT
change status. This would seem to indicate that an outide entity, AOL ;-( ,
is doing something, but I never noticed them changing status in AOL Webmail,
unless I had Windows Mail open before I tried AOL Webmail... I will look
into this further but this has helped narroe down the culprit for sure.
Thanks!

Let's try one more idea...I don't know many details about
IMAP accounts. Maybe it is AOL making them change to
read? Once you get the emails into Windows Mail, go
offline - see if they stay unread. Actually disconnect
from the net or click work offline.

WM->File->Work Offline.

 

[rickster]

Tried what you suggested but that didn't help. See my last reply to
VistaRookie. Could be AOL doing it...

Thanks for your suggestions.

There could be some kind of indexing or internal search components doing
it, but I've never seen such. I would try what I suggested and then see
if some MS service might be involved.

steve

Steve,

My last attempt to fix this was to do a clean vista install on my machine.
After loading vista and the core drivers needed on my machine, I configured
Mail and tried again before any real applications like McAfee were installed.
The problem persisted at that point.

I agree with your point at the end about something tampering with the
database and/or triggering them to be marked read but this happened after the
clean install too... Could it be Microsoft's Malware tool, Windows firewall
or some other Vista tool?

items tab and see what is running at startup. Disable everything and then
go to the Services tab and disable all non-Microsoft services. Then
reboot and see if you have the same phenomenon.tampering with the database or its some other process that is somehow
triggering them to be marked read.

 

[Gary VanderMolen [MVP]]

Is there any possibility that someone is checking that same account
from another computer?

--
Gary VanderMolen, Microsoft MVP (Mail)
Microsoft MVP program: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

Well, you definitely get the award for most perseverence and I think you are
on to something.... I disconnected from the network and my e-mails did NOT
change status. This would seem to indicate that an outide entity, AOL ;-( ,
is doing something, but I never noticed them changing status in AOL Webmail,
unless I had Windows Mail open before I tried AOL Webmail... I will look
into this further but this has helped narroe down the culprit for sure.
Thanks!

 

[rickster]

Well, I tried everythting suggested by Gary, VistaRookie and Steve and was
unable to get my issue resolved. I suspect it has something to do with AOL
and IMAP...

However (and are you ready for this?) I decided to delete my AOL IMAP
account in Windows Mail and set it back up as a POP3 server instead and found
that the Inbox messsages work perfectly with POP3! Them come in as UNREAD
and stay that way until I read them. The downside of this for me is that
POP3 doesn't support synchronization of my AOL personal folders like IMAP
does. So I just re-established them as Local Folders and copied them over
from the AOL IMAP server. Not a perfect solution but one I can easily live
with.

Thanks again for the assistance everyone provided!

Rick

Tried what you suggested but that didn't help. See my last reply to
VistaRookie. Could be AOL doing it...

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[Steve Cochran]

Well, I didn't know you were using IMAP. I'm glad its resolved.

steve

Well, I tried everythting suggested by Gary, VistaRookie and Steve and was
unable to get my issue resolved. I suspect it has something to do with AOL
and IMAP...

However (and are you ready for this?) I decided to delete my AOL IMAP
account in Windows Mail and set it back up as a POP3 server instead and found
that the Inbox messsages work perfectly with POP3! Them come in as UNREAD
and stay that way until I read them. The downside of this for me is that
POP3 doesn't support synchronization of my AOL personal folders like IMAP
does. So I just re-established them as Local Folders and copied them over
from the AOL IMAP server. Not a perfect solution but one I can easily live
with.

Thanks again for the assistance everyone provided!

Rick

 

[Gary VanderMolen [MVP]]

Windows Mail support for IMAP is known to be a bit flaky.

--
Gary VanderMolen, Microsoft MVP (Mail)
Microsoft MVP program: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

Well, I tried everythting suggested by Gary, VistaRookie and Steve and was
unable to get my issue resolved. I suspect it has something to do with AOL
and IMAP...

However (and are you ready for this?) I decided to delete my AOL IMAP
account in Windows Mail and set it back up as a POP3 server instead and found
that the Inbox messsages work perfectly with POP3! Them come in as UNREAD
and stay that way until I read them. The downside of this for me is that
POP3 doesn't support synchronization of my AOL personal folders like IMAP
does. So I just re-established them as Local Folders and copied them over
from the AOL IMAP server. Not a perfect solution but one I can easily live
with.

Thanks again for the assistance everyone provided!

Rick