Windows Mail

Thanks. Computer was all up to date when I got Windows Mail going. I tried what you suggested with reinstalling the msoe.dll files, that didn't work unfortunately.

I think I'll clean reload the whole OS onto my computer and start over. That may also take care of all the other system instability problems I'm having. I'd like to make a backup of the 2 months worth of emails I have saved already before doing that. Is there a tutorial here on how I could back up that email? Again, all the "Windows Mail" tutorials I can find are are for Vista users.... I'm not sure if any of the details would be different on Windows 7 OS....

Bart2010 said:

Thanks. Is there a tutorial here on how I could back up that email? Again, all the "Windows Mail" tutorials I can find are are for Vista users.... I'm not sure if any of the details would be different on Windows 7 OS....

It should not be any different for Windows 7

Windows Mail - Messages - Vista Forums

Bart2010 said:

The new laptop has been really unstable, often crashes and seems to have serious system errors ....

I'm wondering whether this could have anything to do with the changes made to registry as part of the process of getting Windows Mail going. Is it possible, or probably not related and the laptop just has some generic error.

It is extremely unlikely the registry edits contained in this tutorial would cause the types of general system error problems you're having. It only edits registry entries specifically dealing with Windows Mail. It has been extensively tested on both 32bit and 64bit Windows 7 operating sytems.

As a quick check list:

1. When running the tutorial, any changes made to the Windows Mail folder in program files should have been made to the 64bit programs files. The other Windows Mail folder in 32bit Program files(x86) should not have been modified in any way.

2. Did you have an email client program as default program before enabling Windows Mail? For example, Windows Live Mail, which can interfere with WinMail in some environments. If you have I'd suggest uninstalling it.

3. Did you install any other new programs just prior to the email error message? And if yes, have you tried uninstalling them?

4. You could try running a System File Check, which restores any corrupted system operating files by typing the followng command in the Run box: sfc /scannow

5. The method shown in the link by mithcell64 is basically the same for saving emails from Windows Mail in the Windows 7 operating system.

An alternative manual method can be used if you cannot open Windows Mail. This method saves your Email folders, Emails and Accounts in one execution. Click here for a link to that method, which shows a quick way and manual way of doing it.

In your case you would be saving the contents of the Windows Mail folder in AppData in Windows 7, not from Vista. The data should be saved to an external media such as a USB stick or DVD disc.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your help. I'm beginning to suspect that I changed the 32 bit program files instead of the 64 bit ones.... oops! Can't say I wasn't warned clearly enough. Oddly Mail still worked but I was seeing some very odd behavior.

I did a clean reinstall yesterday and went thru the process again, everything is sweet now. Backing up and re-importing mail and folders went well too. Cheers!

My Windows mail has worked great for many months ever since I followed this tutorial. Even today I used it all day. But then I shut the computer down instead of putting it to sleep and went out for a while. Now after the reboot my Mail program will not open at all.

I also noticed a trick that MS always pulls on me. I always have my computers set so that they will not download any updates but only inform me that there is one if I want it. MS will however often go ahead and just download AND install one without my permission, often or perhaps always in the middle of the night. There is one with todays date that I was unaware of. This particular one is a Windows Defender update. A System Restore will not help. I only seem to have 3 restore points and if I try to go back to the first one on the 10th it fails. I hate the way MS does business.

Am I the only one with this problem today? Could it be something other than a sneaky MS trick? I will go back and repeat all the steps I did months ago and see if that helps. Any new info that I am unaware of would be greatly appreciated.

I've heard other people mention this Windows Update "bug". I've never encountered it because I have it set to disable auto updates and downloads completely. I just try to remember to go to Windows Update on the 2nd Tuesday of the month and sometimes the 4th Tuesday also since they sometimes provide updates then as well.

Well I re-did everything slowly and painstakingly and my mail works again. I noticed that there were an additional 15 Windows updates (the Tuesday onslaught) waiting to be installed after the one that downloaded and installed itself at 4 am so I downloaded and installed all of them before fixing the mail.

So all is well again.

Bart2010 said:

Yeah, automatic downloads seem to be a fact of life (not just for MS products, either)...... I wondered last week if my Mail stopped working as the result of an update- I'm not sure if that's even possible, but if so we'd probably be hearing more about it here.... so I guess not. I think my problems were caused by the 64 bit thing as discussed above.

Do you always just put computer to sleep instead of shutting down? If so why would that be? I had the idea shutting down was better, at least occasionally or if for longer periods.

Hope you manage to sort it out- not even being able to open the program sounds bad. My new laptop is only 2 months old (not a lot of files etc...) so doing a backup, doing a clean reinstall and putting everything back again was not to painful....

No actually I don't always put it to sleep. In this case it was my laptop which I do put to sleep more often. It was a case of going out to get tires installed and I thought I would give it a real rest and shut it right off. Also sometimes I will be downloading something big like a movie so I will just leave it on overnight and then start work on it in the morning. So often it may not re-boot for a couple of days as was the case today. So after the reboot, and then having the mail problem and also noticing the "stealth" download, my suspicions were aroused.

roncerr said:

I've heard other people mention this Windows Update "bug". I've never encountered it because I have it set to disable auto updates and downloads completely. I just try to remember to go to Windows Update on the 2nd Tuesday of the month and sometimes the 4th Tuesday also since they sometimes provide updates then as well.

I belive mine is set to notify me of updates but not download them. But it cheats quite often. Your setting I think sounds like a step beyond mine and a better idea so that's what I will do right now.

Thanks Roncerr