Uncorking the bottle - sent email stuck in server

[mc2fool]

V8

BTW, are you using POP3 or IMAP?

Is the offending message in your Sent folder (i.e. WLM thinks it has already sent it)?

And what do you see (Outbox/Sent wise) if you use Zen's webmail interface?

[Infrasonic]

I've had 550's from my domain when sending to my own addresses as test emails (with no attachments), allow listing solved it immediately, which could have been entirely coincidental but I've never had a domain 550 since.

550's are pretty generic and require further investigation, so it may not be the same issue for the OP but the fact that a .js attachment triggered it is a bit damning.

I agree the WLM outbox issue is strange, but could be separate. I'd be inclined to delete the problematic email account and redo it followed by a full restart (cold boot).

Sorry, I obviously wasn't clear. My comment was related to the source of the error message: end receiving server vs Zen's sending server. If it's from the end receiving server then it would come as a bounce message after (attempted) delivery, but as it comes directly from WLM and blocks any further outgoing activity, then what appears to be happening is that the Zen outgoing server is refusing to accept the message in the first place. If that is indeed the case then allow listing at the recipients end won't help as it never gets that far.

So, yes, two separate issues, (a) the Zen server refusing to accept the message, by the looks of it from a policy of not accepting outgoing messages with .js files attached*, and then (b) the WLM outbox problem, which is the killer one, 'cos if a message can't be sent to the SMTP server then it should still be sitting in the outbox for later retry -- or for the user to delete it -- and the fact that it isn't there but somehow still is there is what's totally blocking 88V8.

* there is possibly another issue which is that as 88V8 was trying to attach a "Firefox screenshot" why did he end up with a .js file...

Yes agreed, it could be either the send or receive end causing the 550's, especially if Zen are keen to stop their SMTP IP addresses being blacklisted for potential spam/malware issues (a temporary problem I had with Fasthosts a while back and reported about on here).
I also wondered how a screenshot ended up as .js file.

[Itsallaguess]

To be continued tomorrow.

A couple of other things to try, probably best in this order -

1. Make sure you click the 'Work Offline' button on the Home Page ribbon - when you do this, and you're working offline, does the offending message then appear in the 'Outbox' to enable you to manually delete it?

2. Try out a 'Repair' of the Windows Live Mail program - go to your Start / Run box, and type 'AppWiz.cpl' - somewhere there's hopefully listed a 'Windows Essentials 2012 / Windows Live Essentials' entry, where you can double click it and then get a chance to 'Uninstall/Change-or-Remove', and an option to 'Repair all Windows Essentials Programs'

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[UncleEbenezer]

* there is possibly another issue which is that as 88V8 was trying to attach a "Firefox screenshot" why did he end up with a .js file...

It seems to indicate confusion in the question.

There are other questionmarks everyone has glossed over. Like what is happening to other mail? If one bad message causes other mail not to be sent, that would indicate "WLM" is a seriously defective mailer. It already suggests poor UI design, if the OP hasn't found a way to dismiss (permanently) the error message.

[swill453]

If there's any suspicion that the problem is with the Zen mail server, then possibly this can be seen and possibly rectified by using the webmail interface https://webmail.zen.co.uk/

(I suspect it's more likely to be a problem on the local mail client though.)

Scott.

[Urbandreamer]

I would start by installing a different email client and checking that you can send and recieve emails from that.
There are lot's to choose from.
ie
https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?sc=12

I'm not sure what "WLM" is but suspect that it could be the discontinued "Windows Live Mail". (Edit, I did check be failed to see what was written in the OP)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Mail

I believe that files with a ".js" extension are normally Javascript files.
https://fileinfo.com/extension/js
They are/were used to attach exicutable code to emails back in the days of "script kiddies".

If you get a different email client working you then need to think about why you are using "WLM" and if it is worth trying to fix it.

If you decide not to then you have the fun choice of which email client to use. Many stick to Microsoft and use Outlook. My wife and I use Thunderbird as personal email clients on PC's.

[swill453]

I'm not sure what "WLM" is but suspect that it could be the discontinued "Windows Live Mail".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Mail

As stated in the OP.

Scott.

[Itsallaguess]

Then I turned off the firewalls in Control Panel, but no change in the error message.

Then immediately turned them back on.

Did you give it a go with AV temporarily turned off as well?

I think it's worth trying temporarily with both Firewall and AV turned off, just to make sure they're not getting in the way of anything...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[mc2fool]

If one bad message causes other mail not to be sent, that would indicate "WLM" is a seriously defective mailer. It already suggests poor UI design, if the OP hasn't found a way to dismiss (permanently) the error message.

IIRC Outlook Express, which WLM grew out of, did the same and it wasn't unreasonable at the time 'cos SMTP servers then wouldn't reject outgoing messages from clients on a per-message-contents basis, but rather for more systemic issues (invalid account, improper configuration, broken server, etc, etc) which would be persistent for all outgoing messages until corrected/fixed, so having failed on the first there wasn't any point in it continuing with the rest as they'd almost certainly encounter the same problem.

However, when that happened with OE it left those outgoing messages in the Outbox and you could then either retry later (maybe after fixing whatever the systemic issue was), or just delete them, and I suspect that WLM is supposed to do the same, but something was gone skewiff such that the troublesome message is still in the Outbox but isn't visible for the user to be able to delete it. That's the way it sounds at least. I.e. a bug.

[ReformedCharacter]

How's about deleting the temp folder (which might contain the stuck outgoing email):

As a general rule, try finding it at %userprofile%AppDataLocalTemp. Delete all files in it via the Delete button from the Home menu, then restart Windows Live Mail.

https://windowsreport.com/live-mail-not ... -properly/

RC

[88V8]

So, I tried Work Offline and bingo!! five unsent emails appeared in the Outbox, one of which had the offending attachments.
Which I deleted, along with the email itself, and the other four emails queued up behind it

That still still didn't enable me to send, but then we had to go out and when I came back and restarted, the problem had cleared, hooray.

I don't think I'll repeat the Firefox screenshot. I'll take a picture of the screen with my camera and send that instead. Keep it simple.

In the course of rummaging around for solutions, I find that Windows Live Mail is 'obsolete', allegedly because it doesn't support touch screens. If true, that's annoying as I never use touch screens (other than the satnav) so a perfectly good programme has been junked for the sake of something I don't want.
It also seems that transferring from WLM to other programmes is not that simple. Not only eight years of emails - heavily thinned in my account but the less said about the wife's the better - but also contacts, and the storage folders which are a very useful filing system and have over 5,000 messages that I would not like to lose.

Zen did set me up a Webmail account while they were trying to help me fix the problem. It sort of works, but there is no Sent folder. It looks like something designed for primary schools. Perhaps it improves with acquaintance.

Things were so much easier when one used paper. Was reading an article about archiving, which commented that unless one assiduously updates and transfers stuff, it could eventually be easier to look at Great Granpa's photos in the album than the digital pictures one took in 2002. And not only is software a future problem, but firmware and hardware, and passwords especially if they are remotely held on servers which in future will not exist. The National Archive apparently keeps things on tape.

Anyway, thankyou all for your trouble.

V8

[Itsallaguess]

So, I tried Work Offline and bingo!! five unsent emails appeared in the Outbox, one of which had the offending attachments.

Which I deleted, along with the email itself, and the other four emails queued up behind it

That still still didn't enable me to send, but then we had to go out and when I came back and restarted, the problem had cleared, hooray.

Great news.

Windows Live Mail seems to behave a little oddly when it comes to being online when started up and already having things in your 'Outbox' that were perhaps not sent last time it ran, because it looks like when you start Windows Live Mail in the 'Working Online' state, it'll go directly to your Outbox before you get a chance to see anything there, and remove all the pending Outbox emails, and turn them into individual local PC processes, and then sit there trying to 'send' those 'email processes', whilst your Outbox *seems* to be empty at that stage...

When the 'email processes' manage to properly send the emails, they'll put a copy into your 'Sent' folder, and then naturally close the associated 'email process'.

Which is all fine and dandy so long as there's no issues with sending stuff....

The problem seems to be that when there *are* problems sending stuff, then those 'email processes' will simply stick around as local PC processes, and not give you any real visibility as to what you can manually do with your 'Outbox' to help solve the issues, as they're busy hiding and mothering those problematic emails in those local PC processes...

So, hitting the 'Work Offline' button tells Windows Live Mail to stop mothering those 'email processes', and to dump any un-sent ones back into your Outbox, where you can then manually fix them as required...

This thread has been an interesting journey, and one which has ended in me realising that any developer associated with that Windows Live Mail 'Send email' process wants taking out and slapping round the head.

Very hard....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[UncleEbenezer]

If one bad message causes other mail not to be sent, that would indicate "WLM" is a seriously defective mailer. It already suggests poor UI design, if the OP hasn't found a way to dismiss (permanently) the error message.

IIRC Outlook Express, which WLM grew out of, did the same and it wasn't unreasonable at the time 'cos SMTP servers then wouldn't reject outgoing messages from clients on a per-message-contents basis, but rather for more systemic issues (invalid account, improper configuration, broken server, etc, etc) which would be persistent for all outgoing messages until corrected/fixed, so having failed on the first there wasn't any point in it continuing with the rest as they'd almost certainly encounter the same problem.

Quite the contrary! That kind of issue can still happen, but is neither more nor less likely than long before there was ever an Outlook.

The distinction between per-message and systemic issues goes back at least to the 1980s, even if some things have changed since then like trying to deliver for up to five days to deal with intermittent servers and connections.

[mc2fool]

If one bad message causes other mail not to be sent, that would indicate "WLM" is a seriously defective mailer. It already suggests poor UI design, if the OP hasn't found a way to dismiss (permanently) the error message.

IIRC Outlook Express, which WLM grew out of, did the same and it wasn't unreasonable at the time 'cos SMTP servers then wouldn't reject outgoing messages from clients on a per-message-contents basis, but rather for more systemic issues (invalid account, improper configuration, broken server, etc, etc) which would be persistent for all outgoing messages until corrected/fixed, so having failed on the first there wasn't any point in it continuing with the rest as they'd almost certainly encounter the same problem.

Quite the contrary! That kind of issue can still happen, but is neither more nor less likely than long before there was ever an Outlook.

The distinction between per-message and systemic issues goes back at least to the 1980s, even if some things have changed since then like trying to deliver for up to five days to deal with intermittent servers and connections.

Well I've been using SMTP clients since 1982 and it's only in recent years that I've even heard of, let alone experienced, SMTP servers refusing to accept messages from clients because of their content. At heart SMTP is very trusting and server implementations were too for a very long time.

[Infrasonic]

Well I've been using SMTP clients since 1982 and it's only in recent years that I've even heard of, let alone experienced, SMTP servers refusing to accept messages from clients because of their content. At heart SMTP is very trusting and server implementations were too for a very long time.

Agreed.
One of the reasons I started that ongoing email thread on this board was because of how complicated email has become with all the additional layers that have been added over the years to counteract spam, spoofing and malware.

I've had my own domains since the the late nineties as well as multiple email addresses with free webmail et al and it was all pretty simple until about ten years ago, and even back then the issues were relatively minor to resolve.

These days you need a networking black belt to work out all the potential pitfalls.
It's getting to the stage where I seriously think email might slowly die as it's becoming too labour intensive to maintain.

[UncleEbenezer]

Well I've been using SMTP clients since 1982 and it's only in recent years that I've even heard of, let alone experienced, SMTP servers refusing to accept messages from clients because of their content. At heart SMTP is very trusting and server implementations were too for a very long time.

For what it's worth, I've had my own domain and run a mailserver on it since 1997. That was a little before email spam became a problem, and my address was public.

By the turn of the century I was filtering based on aspect of contents. In 2001 as an experiment I turned off my spam filtering (excepting a blacklist of spam-factory IP addresses, and got a crop of between 4000 and 4500 spam messages a day for an unfiltered week. It was necessary back then if you had a visible address!

[mc2fool]

Well I've been using SMTP clients since 1982 and it's only in recent years that I've even heard of, let alone experienced, SMTP servers refusing to accept messages from clients because of their content. At heart SMTP is very trusting and server implementations were too for a very long time.

For what it's worth, I've had my own domain and run a mailserver on it since 1997. That was a little before email spam became a problem, and my address was public.

By the turn of the century I was filtering based on aspect of contents. In 2001 as an experiment I turned off my spam filtering (excepting a blacklist of spam-factory IP addresses, and got a crop of between 4000 and 4500 spam messages a day for an unfiltered week. It was necessary back then if you had a visible address!

That's incoming emails. What we've been talking about is your outgoing SMTP server refusing to accept/relay your outgoing emails from your client based on content.

Yes, spam filtering for incoming emails has been around for yonks. ISPs filtering outgoing emails is relatively new...ish

[88V8]

As another minor oddity, my wife's end of WLM persistently puts my emails to her, in her Junk folder, even though I'm a Safe Sender. Huh.

It's getting to the stage where I seriously think email might slowly die as it's becoming too labour intensive to maintain.

I've noticed that the presenters on Times Radio hardly ever give out their email address - Twitter, Text. I'd assumed that they were trying to skew the demographic of their commentariat, but perhaps there is a more practical reason.

V8

[Infrasonic]

As another minor oddity, my wife's end of WLM persistently puts my emails to her, in her Junk folder, even though I'm a Safe Sender. Huh.

But are you actually in her contacts list? Safe sender isn't always enough to stop you being spam foldered these days, especially if you've been grey listed for some previous unknown misdemeanour.
Been there done that with multiple contacts in Outlook.com. I still have to check junk folders multiple times a day for legitimate emails.
I noticed Outlook.com has reduced the auto deletion from junk folders to 10 days now from 30, so you have to be constantly vigilant.
Overall it's becoming a PITA...