I think we are in agreement that having multiple protections is best. I don’t have any viruses, but that doesn’t mean I don’t value being vigilant.
You and other emClient responses have repeatedly referred to AVG. This has not been ignored. I am battling with them just as much as with emClient. I have supplied this info to emClient support as fyi’s, but some people there don’t read, and keep replying blaming AVG. This adds to the frustration, as it seems the solution requires input from both software providers, if they are going to work together for the betterment of their products. But emClient are the only party doing nothing.
A further fyi, I would like to share with you, the following snip quote from AVG, which I agree with, and have mentioned to AVG before, but still been ignored: “Typically with the mail shield, I would expect to see it either works or it doesn’t as these types of issues are usually caused by some certificate/port issue and not something that would “come and go” so to speak.”
This is most definitely a come and go situation. Every day I am getting closer to finding this problem through trial and error, so watch this space.
Just to reiterate, I have no bias, I paid for both products, and just want my email service to work with the same protection mechanisms in place, like other email clients do.
If the issue is sporadic (come and go), then my guess is that the virus scanner is operating at a network level, and is inspecting and modifying network traffic flowing over the imap/pop/smtp ports. It looks like this assumption might be true based on this: How to troubleshoot your email scanning protection in AVG AntiVirus | AVG
Once it starts inspecting things at a network level, who knows what could trigger the virus scanner to take corrective action to modify the network traffic to remove what it deems malicious. Once it starts playing with the network data, this could cause issues with a given email client, such as eM Client reporting connection issues.
Since eM Client does not store the download emails into a easily readable text format that the virus scanner could instead do a file scan on (such as mdir format), it looks like the only method to scan the actual downloaded emails in eM client is by doing it at the network level. Of course by doing so you run into the issue I explained above.
That is why I mentioned that it is better (and faster) to have the server side handle the email inspection and take corrective actions as needed (remove if it has a virus, or put into a junk folder if spam). Most likely someone is going to get a virus from an email by executing a file attachment. When you download (save) a attachment to your computer, that should trigger the virus file scanner, and catch it. Turning off the email scanning functionality of the virus scanner only turns off its ability to monitor the network traffic over the email ports.
So unless all the virus scanner developers and eM client developers work directly to ensure their MITM traffic inspection is not breaking things, and ensure no future virus definition update causes regression, then there is no realistic solution other then disabling the email scanning functionality in the virus scanner.
Of course that is only my opinion of the situation, and I can sympathize with the eM client developers given how difficult it must be for their application to work with all virus scanners out there when they start inspecting and manipulating things at a network level, and then get blamed that the issue is with their client.
Yes, sporadic, or come and go may not be the best explanation. But it is hard to be sure. Some examples, if I do a Repair on a folder in emClient, this sometimes triggers the loss of sync after the repair finishes, but the folder remains empty. Or the other main scenario, some overnight emails, but not all, when the computer has been logged out, do not arrive until several hours later, but are time stamped with the correct time. Or, computer goes to sleep while emClient is open, then when it comes out of sleep, it sometimes loses sync.
As far as sympathy, this is simply business. If a company wants to produce software and take our money for the product, todays world requires that software works in conjunction with other necessary software. Anti-virus scanning is necessary today. If they aren’t happy, then they should get out of the software business.
I think this would cast some doubt on the Email Shield being the solution to this fault. Email Shield has been off for a day, laptop has been rebooted and was off overnight. The Red Triangle appeared after Laptop has been in sleep mode in this case.:
My issue was resolved after another windows update. So the later eM client version must have been affected by the previous windows upadte and that has now \been dealt with. Did anyone else find the same?
This might also be of help to you. Searching through the AVG site one of their I guess moderators or staff suggested also “before exporting the AVG Certificate” and importing the certificate into your mail client to “check the AVG Ports are correct” and also to "Try using the "Google DNS Servers with IPV4 and not IPV6.
See AVG link below. Might help you if you are still having issues. One customer there just didn’t want to do that and just disabled Mailshield but I know you don’t wanna do that, as you paid for AVG so maybe this might help you.
Also definitely do any Windows updates as could be patches in the Win OS as well needed as @chainsaw1960 found worked for him. Since I stalled the AVG certificate into eM Client V8 and allowed eM Client into AVG I have no issues with Windows 11 or Windows 10 using my normal auto assigned ISP DNS Servers anyway.
Ps I used to use CloudFlare & other different DNS servers but found they had lots of resolving issues from time to time and interfered with mail and browsing. Hope eM Client is working better.
Hi Cyberzork, Thanks for continuing to think about this. The AVG ports are all correct. Our DNS servers are set to our ISP provider. We have used others in the past, but over recent years, have settled on our ISP and the current setup has been very reliable.
You may be interested in what I have found so far:
emClient did not like being set to start automatically with Windows. When I unticked that on my Desktop, the reliability improved.
emClient does not resync automatically on the Laptop after Sleep. I have set sychronization to every 5 minutes, and this kicks resync back into life.
But even with those, and everything working perfectly for 2 days, on the third day when I started computers up, they both had Red Triangle, and only picked up 15 of 20 emails from overnight. I have 3 accounts, but noticed that it is only the IMAP account playling up. So, to try something new, I changed AVG’s secure IMAP port from 993 to 994. ( ie theory is to stop AVG from looking at my IMAP port, and see if that was affecting emClient. As soon as I did that on both computers, emClient sprung into life. All has been ok for 2 days now.
I have been working with support staff at AVG, and have passed this interesting info to them.
emClient does not resync automatically on the Laptop after Sleep. I have set sychronization to every 5 minutes, and this kicks resync back into life
I spoke to Microsoft about why email apps do that and as apparently (even Outlook does it too) when the desktop computers or laptops sleep, and they say the OS causes it by default sleep mode for many email clients as been reported to them. They advised you have to setup your Win 10/11 OS in “Hybrid sleep mode” instead to stop that happening. Also default non hybrid sleep mode can cause the mailers to automatically close and not reconnect as well. So try setting Hybrid sleep mode instead.
If you have Windows 11 here is now to enable or disable Hybrid sleep mode.
I’ve tested running eM Client 9.0.1708 latest official version with Windows 11 and “Hybrid / Sleep” mode with AVG and also (without AVG) with the AVG exported Certificate installed in eM Client and Allowed eM Client in AVG & worked perfectly when came out of sleep mode on a new upgraded Win 10-Win 11 Asus Tuff AMD 8GB / SSD laptop bought in the last year and My i7 Intel / 8GB custom built Win 10 - Win 11 upgraded Desktop.
eM Client 9.0.1708 was still connected when it came out of Hybrid / Sleep mode and no issues at all with 1 x Gmail IMAP account and 1 x IMAP local ISP account and 1 x old POP account (no using much anymore). They are a stock Windows 11 laptop and stock Windows 11 desktop pcs apart from when i tested AVG on them. Windows security was also not affected & both ran simultaneously with no NP.
Thanks for that. I did try the Hybrid sleep mode, but with so many other emClient/AVG problems, it is painstakingly difficult to isolate the real problems when testing for certain things. Just to add, I have been working for weeks now with AVG and Avast, with their support team, and they still don’t know why MailShield is blocking emClient IMAP intermittently. What is becoming more obvious as time goes on, is that problems do not happen instantly, it can take 1 to 4 days before you are losing so many emails that you might notice some missing in between some still arriving. We have been supplying detailed logs, processmonitor logs and much more, multiple different AVG and Avast support, and getting nowhere.
This current setup is unworkable, and my current plan is to find another antivirus software.
I have just tested Hybrid sleep, and the result did not change. You still have to manually refresh emClient, or turn on scheduled Synchronize Items every x minutes to bring it back to life.
Isn’t that normal behavior for an email client where if you bring the computer out of sleep you need to hit the “Refresh” button, or wait until the “Synchronize items every # minutes” is reached which triggers a refresh?
I put my computer in and out of sleep all the time, and usually when I bring it out of sleep I just hit “refresh” and it updates just fine and continues to do so until I put it back to sleep. I am guessing you are wanting eM Client to recognize it came out of sleep and trigger a refresh automatically? I am wondering if that is even possible? Does Outlook (or Thunderbird) handle things differently if setup to use IMAP when it comes out of sleep?
I admit it would be nice if it could refresh automatically coming out of sleep, but I figured it was not possible either due to Windows and/or IMAP protocol itself. So it sounds like what your are describing as an issue is normal behavior when coming out of sleep, but it would be interesting to hear if anyone else has seen other email clients handle things differently.
I think you are right about the coming out of sleep. The problem surfaced because I was trying to track down why emClient with AVG reliability had become so intermittent since emClient v9. Each day things were happening that weren’t right, and this is continuing btw. But one thing I noticed was the coming out of sleep. When I tested further, v8 operated the same. So I have stopped worrying about that part, and just hit refresh after sleep. Then cyberzork mentioned having Microsoft recommend Hybrid Sleep, so I went back and tested that. No difference, but to clarify, I am not worried about this part any more.
@Grant_Collingwood it looks like in the newly released eM Client 9.1 when I come out of sleep it now triggers a refresh all accounts automatically so I no longer have to manually trigger this when bringing the computer out of sleep. When you install eM Client 9.1 does it do the same thing for you?
