Victek said:
I'm having assorted problems with both Windows Live Mail
(current version) and Windows Mail; some information
from a Norton/Symantec chat technician indicates that
WLM is not compatible with NIS 2010 and WM is not
fully compatible.
I only installed NIS 2009 after seeing information that is
known to be compatible with WM, and assumed that upgrading
to NIS 2010 and/or installing WLM would not cause any new
problems. Should this assumption be revised?
Robert Miles
.
Can you be more specific? Are you using POP3 accounts and concerned about
NIS spam filtering? I'm running NIS 2010 on two machines using Hotmail
and Gmail (IMAP) accounts. NIS doesn't try to filter these and I have no
problems with it.
Is this more specific enough?
I'm using one POP3 account, with no problems if the email/newsreader
programs start at all, and four NNTP accounts, with various problems.
Also one HTTP email account under WLM but not WM.
The POP3 email server includes spam filtering that is somewhat
overaggressive - I often have to log in with its HTTP connection
method instead to tell it what it has incorrectly identified a spam, so that
I CAN download those messages. This leave very little POP3 email
that actually is spam.
The problems on my 32-bit desktop, where I am still using WM
only:
1. No successful backups in over 3 months. I'm considering switching
to WLM there, but only after a successful full backup. I've used quite
a few DVD+RWs trying for a full backup, with very few backups even
reaching the third of the at least three DVD+RWs needed to hold a full
backup before they fail. Among other problems, the backup program
does not appear to have a useful recovery from situations where some
other program (such as an antivirus program) has temporarily seized
control of whatever place it uses to store information on sucessfully
completed backups. I might be able to tell NIS 2010 not to interfere
with that storage, if it happens to be a file and and someone will tell me
how to find that file.
2. No completed Disk Defragmenter runs in over 3 months. I suspect
that it is unable to handle the sheer number of files I now have well during
the overnight runs automatically started, over 1,000,000 files on that
computer although mostly rather small *.nws files. I'm planning a
manually started run later, so that moving the mouse won't halt the run,
after I get my 64-bit desktop working better.
3. For a few months, none of the Windows Mail runs of the
section to compact its database have completed successfully. I've
had to use WMUtil for this compaction instead, and frequently
increase the number of runs for WM to allow before trying to compact
its database again. This has, however, left me with a few dozen
WindowsMail.MSMessageStore.2010_*.* files, all with a size around
1.3 GB. Is it safe to delete the older of those? My guess is that WM
can't handle the large number of *.nws files in its database very well -
about 800,000 of them.
4. For a few months, few of the WM searches for newsgroups posts
with a specific word in the subject line have completed successfully.
They often return 0 items found, even when I've just seen a post
with a subject line it should find.
5. I've seen signs that the SuperFetch feature of Vista is often very
slow at releasing any RAM it uses, especially when BOINC
background programs are running. This may indicate that SuperFetch
needs an option to allow running the portion for releasing memory at a
priority higher that typical background programs, since most BOINC
application programs deliberately try to do something useful with
all the CPU time that isn't used by some higher priority program, even
though they run at normal background priority. What little information
I've found on the registry values controlling Superfetch appears to say
that Windows XP and Windows 7 have a suitable registry value for
getting SOME control of SuperFetch, but Windows Vista doesn't.
6. No easy way to tell WM to find all the posts where the *.nws
file is missing, and decide whether to delete them. None for posts
there the *.nws file is truncated to 0 bytes either, but at least the
WMUtil add-on provides this function.
The problems on my 64-bit desktop:
1. The same type of backup and Disk Defragmenter problems, also
for over three months but with more files involved.
A recent manual start of the Disk Defragmenter program ran about 60 hours
before a power outage stopped it; I haven't had time to try this again. For
any program that needs to run that long, I'd like at least some type of
progress reports. The NIS 2010 full scan run that insisted on running
during this same time reached 4,400,000 items scanned before the power
outage, though. I'm now trying a NIS 2010 run alone, but expect it to take
a few more days to complete.
2. For some time, I've had two errors every time I try to start WM:
Windows Mail could not be started. The application
was unable to open the Windows Mail message store.
Your Windows Mail mailbox data is currently being
used by another program, such as a virus scanner.
Close the program or wait for it to complete its
operation, then open Windows Mail again.
(0x800C0155)
and after I click the OK button of that error message:
Windows Mail could not be started because MSOE.DLL could not be initialized.
Waiting longer before I click the OK button or the button
to approve the compaction does not help; neither does
rebooting and trying to start WM again. Shutting off
any interference from NIS 2010 is difficult I've only
tried it once; that didn't help either.
The Get help from communities button is new and does
not work properly for me yet - appears to log into an
account created when I mistyped my account name,
not the one with better hiding of my main email address.
The hints of which program has opened the Windows Mail
mailbox data have not proved adequate to identify that
program and shut it down - could more detail be added
to this error message, showing just what program?
2. I've installed WLM on that machine after the above error
started showing but it appears that the same problem is keeping
WLM from importing messages from the WM database.
3. I've been unable to find whether OeyEnc will add yEnc
decoding ability to WLM, without taking it away from WM
if I can ever get WM to restart properly. Or whether there's
any other add-on which can add yEnc decoding ability to
WLM.
4. WLM is often very slow to start, possibly due to a similar
problem with the SuperFetch feature of Vista being very slow
to release any RAM it controls.
5. WLM often tries to expand the amount of working set it
controls past the 8 GB of RAM which is the maximum that
computer's motherboard will hold. WLM may be having
trouble releasing the memory used by some of the sections it
uses to translate from one character set to another; many
of the newsgroups spammers seem to be trying to create
problems by putting their subject lines in character sets not
normally used for English, but which happen to contain all
the characters needed to create a subject line in English
with some graphics characters added.
6. WLM often has trouble with newsgroup posts it
decides were sent to both an email address and to one or
more newsgroups, often splitting them into a copy for the
email address and moving this copy into a recovery folder,
but leaving a copy for newsgroup(s) behind, with some
problem that makes it difficult to move those copies into
a storage folder. Some of the newsgroups that seem to
have an especially high percentage of posts sent that
way:
alt.html
alt.comp.anti-virus
comp.lang.cobol
7. The database compaction phase of WLM always fails
to complete. Perhaps the extimated 2,200,000 newsgroups
posts in its database have something to do with this.
I haven't found any WMUtil-equivalent that can compress
its database in this situation, and am not willing to try telling
WMUtil to compress the WLM database instead with no
recent usable backups.
My 64-bit laptop has a more easily identified problem. The
touchpad that came with it cannot handle some of the mouse
functions WM and WLM use, so even though both WM
and WLM are still running properly there, I can't do enough
with them. I've bought a mouse to add to it, but don't have
enough table space to add the mouse and actually use it.
Far fewer files on the WM and WLM databases on that
computer, though.
Robert Miles
