I’m very impressed with eMClient, and am now using it instead of Outlook. However, there is one issue that’s causing me some headaches; three times in the last two days, I have re-opened the program, only to be confronted with the “repair” box telling me that the program wasn’t properly shut down and it was checking for inconsistencies and database damage.
I know that on at least two of those occasions I did indeed shut down the computer properly - eMC may have been open at the time but presumably it’s supposed to shut down cleanly during a Windows shutdown. The third occasion was when I woke up my computer after shutting the lid and putting it to sleep - again, the database checker tool was invoked. Each of those occasions can take 15-20 minutes or more to start up the program, and leaves the computer pretty well strangled while it’s working on eMClient.
Any ideas? Is the database really that fragile?
Using latest version of eMClient, on a ThinkPad T420 with 4GB RAM under Windows 7 64-bit
EM is using SQLite for their database. Whether that good or not, it ones opinion. It does have serveral advantages, such as the performance for query compare to traditional Mbox solution. Prior to eM 3.5, it did have a bug where eM does not shut down with Windows. I’m not sure if Windows 7’s superfetch or some other form of caching has create new problem with this, but make sure eM Client is closed before shutting down if you are experiencing problems. As for as sleep (I’m assuming it standby), it also had problem prior to 3.5, which is now fixed. I have no idea why it doing on your PC.
I don’t think the database is fragile, however, if eM does not initial the last write to re-pack the database, it would initiate a database check. Bottom line, we need to find out why it does this on your laptop, because it not suppose to.
Thanks for this, TNCS; I’ll certainly take your advice about closing eM before shutting down, and not to rely on the standard Windows close routines. I’m using W7, and I must admit, I haven’t seen eM feature in the “closing applications” dialog that you get when you shut down Windows. It’s also possible that I need to look at my laptop’s configuration, to see exactly what it’s doing when I shut down; it may be simply putting it to deep sleep, which doesn’t work the same way.
Deep sleep is a combination of standby + hibernation. I haven’t use this feature yet so I’m not sure whether it will cause problem or not (more likely not). My guess it the caching/prefetch. If you can’t get it right, I’ll suggest you send a log to eM too see what the program when you shut down/standby.
Using 5.0.16979.0, on Vista Home Premium SP2, I did a Windows Restart command from the login (i.e., choose a user) page. My user was the only one active, and eM Client was running. Following the restart, eM Client went through its database-check for five or six minutes (and did not report anything).
As a result of reading this thread, I’ll attempt to specifically shut down eM Client before restarting the PC.
However, this is not a real solution. Windows Update may also restart the PC in the middle of the night, and who knows what else. If I manually close eM Client, it shuts down immediately. No problem, with whatever database it’s using. It should do the same when it receives a shut down request/notification from Windows, too; as I understand that a user-close command is very similar but slightly different from an O/S shut-down command, it seems to me that there is a programming bug involved. That is, it seems to me that eM Client is not properly handling this request/notification from Windows, and so this should be corrected.
I am also seeing more cases of the “checking database” dialog on startup. It seems to be more prevalent in the 5.0 betas than in the previous 4.0 version. But I agree with Bill’s comments above. eM should shut itself down cleanly upon a Windows shutdown, and not depend on the user remembering to shut it down as a separate action. Hopefully this can be fixed in the final 5.0 release.
The jury is still out for me. There are some good features added but I thought the database would be made more robust.
In the recent past with v 4 I had the ongoing issue of DbRepair taking hours to finish. The forum hinted that this would be rectified in v 5 but I am now in the 3rd hour of waiting since I restarted eM. The Client froze up whilst loading a directory and I had to force End Process to terminate then restart it.
I have found that although v 5 loads much quicker, it now takes a long time to open the various account Inboxes. Instead of loading all in the background, it seems to load only when you select the directory or a dedicated file populated by rules.
I am keeping an open mind on this as it may just be my PC acting up.
By the sounds of it, I am not the only one having issues.
I am a committed Pro license holder and will NEVER return to the MS Outlook stable again, so developers, let’s iron out the upgrade wrinkles and get eMclient humming again!
Version 5 contain a fix for this - if eM Client is still running when PC shutting down you should be asked to force the shut-down or wait. Can you confirm that?
I have learnt to always close eM first and wait for the Task Manager to show it has terminated before restarting/closing down.
What happened above is that I had to terminate eM manually because it hung/locked up.
I cannot say that when I shut down the PC that eM asks anything.
Subsequent to the above experience I did a DiskCheck and my system appears more stable now, so perhaps, in view of my PC issues, my earlier problems should be ignored for now as being system-related.
Otherwise, everything seems to be running well.
I like that I can move the cursor to select another directory even whilst eM is still busy loading the current directory. This “freeze” used to irk me no end with v 4.