OK to delete WLM if running Windows Mail in Win 7?

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Probably a question for Dr. Who… or for anyone else doing this. I’ve been running Windows Mail for 2 years on Windows 7 without a hitch. I seem to recall that you were supposed to delete Windows Live Mail if you were going to do this to prevent conflicts, but I am not positive I read that. Anyway, Windows Mail always takes a few seconds to open a new mail, as though WLM tries first or something like that, and then gives up and lets WM have it. WM is my default email program. So what I want to know is whether it is safe to get rid of WLM? Maybe WM will open mails and reply forms immediately if I do.

Also, has any Windows Mail user noticed lately that some emails are blank when open? I know it is true when I open some (but not all) mails sent from Yahoo.com webmail but it happens occasionally with others too. This is very recent. I can see them if I either reply or if I forward, but sometimes they are still blank and the trick then is to just convert them to plain text format. If you view source you can see everything’s there – it is simply not showing when you open the mail.

Thanks in advance for any help.

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If you are not using WLM you may uninstall it any time you wish. You need to uninstall Windows Live Essentials so be careful if you use any of the other programs included in WLE that you only uninstall the WLM piece.

Are the blank emails HTML or plain text?

Joe

--Joe

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Hi Joe,
Thanks for replying. (For some reason this page keeps logging me out instead of leaving me logged in – is there a setting I can change?) I don’t use any of the WL components, actually, but thank you for the warning. I’d forgotten Essentials even existed. Windows Mail has been absolutely flawless on Windows 7, despite having many many gigabytes of archived messages. (And yes, they are backed up on an external disk ).

I am looking for consistency and connections so will go do properties/view source to see if these are html. I kind of assumed most people write html messages these days but maybe not! I was ready to think the “new” Yahoo mail that was coming in to me from Yahoo Groups was going to give me all blanks but that doesn’t seem to be true either. I will post what I can determine so you can givie it a look.

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There is a check box when you login. I think it is “Remember Me”. Is that checked?

Joe

--Joe

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Hi Joe –
I just checked the remember me box so hopefully that’ll do it.

I looked at a number of different emails from different people and tried to compared through view source. Well, it’s bewildering. I was not able to find anything that was consistent among the blank ones. They all are text/plain for the first part of the message and all are text/html for the second part. There are a variety of charsets but I can’t pick any one that consistently gives a blank. I belong to a Yahoo group where a fellow moderator uses yahoo mail. His are now always blank unless I do reply or forward and convert it to plain text and then it is readable. I sent two to the group myself, one after the other. One is blank, the other is not. Both are using UFT 8 as encoding. Of course there are a ton of variables and I can’t even begin to guess how I could account for all of them to make a true comparison.

If a particular email is blank when I open it, that does not change. It will be blank next time I look at it too. I did try closing and reopening the mail program. I have not tried to reboot – I’m afraid to!!

I installed Windows 7’s service pack 1 just before this started and am wondering if that is the problem and if so, can I use a restore point to uninstall it.

I wish I knew where to find Susan Bradley’s list of patches not to install! I started to keep a list of them a long time ago but can’t find it now. There was one patch, I recall, that was said to damage Mail and that is why I never installed another update after I read that. I was always afraid one of them would mess up the mail program. I am kicking myself for installing it now. I should never have done that if that is, indeed, the cause of my problems.

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Just an added note – I see I got Explorer 10 in that batch of stuff. I had rolled back to 8 because 9 did not work on my computer – pages did not load. I use Chrome and never IE – too slow – so I guess I don’t care unless it messed up something else for me… that I don’t know about. Also, thinking it over – it has been SO long since I have thought about Windows updates that I realize I am actually not sure if I just got SP 1 (that’s awful, not to remember if I already had it… must be slipping ). But truly, I just never thought about it. Do you know when SP1 came out? If it was before I got this computer, they would have included it, I think. (HP Pavilion Laptop, DV 7 series)

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I wish I knew where to find Susan Bradley’s list of patches not to install!

The Windows Secrets’ master Patch Watch chart is always at http://windowssecrets.com/patch-watch/windows-secrets-master-patch-watch-chart/

Do you know when SP1 came out?

Three years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#Service_Pack_1

Bruce

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Good, when I finish work, I will go look at the chart!! Three years ago for SP 1? Then, I think this computer came with it already in place – probably .

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To see if SP1 is installed right click on “Computer” in Windows Explorer or the Start Menu and select Properties. In the “Windows Edition” section at the top it will have “Service Pack 1” if it is installed.

I would not uninstall SP1. I would get all the patches after SP1 installed except IE if it causes problems. If WLM uses the IE rendering engine updating IE may cause problems. Did reverting IE to IE8 fix the email issue?

It will be very tedious but you can access prior newsletters. Just click on the “Newsletter Archives” tab at the top of the page. The newsletters published this year are listed in detail. You can go back to prior years too by clicking on one of the years listed.

Joe

--Joe

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Yes, SP 1 is installed… I think what I meant was, I forgot whether it was factory installed! I still can’t remember (embarrassed!!!!). So maybe I just installed around a hundred patches that came out after SP 1. I am now thinking that that is what I did. I have no idea what struck me… normally I am so ultra cautious and this time I didn’t even look at what they had available, I just told it to update. Kicking myself now.

I don’t know if IE is the problem. I did not attempt to make any changes – I was waiting to hear your thoughts on this. There are several other patches waiting but I did not install them – for the same reason.

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Just saw your replies, and will now read them.

I am finding that all emails from one particular individual are blank. Emails from another are sometimes blank. I notice when I click Reply and put my cursor over the blank page where the original message is supposed to be, the cursor trembles and rapidly switches between an hourglass and a pointer. I think it is trying repeatedly to make the type show up on the page. I found today that on the email I have received that is blank, if I do Select All, Copy, and then paste, or paste-special into Word 2003, as plain text, the type instantly shows up on the Word doc. So it can be “read” by the select and copy and paste functions – but not *seen* by me.

Does this suggest any clues to anyone? I feel like it does, but I just don’t know enough to know what!!

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If you updated the browser that may be the problem. Not sure that WLM is compatible with newer versions of IE. Have you reverted to IE8?

Joe

--Joe

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PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

Joe, you gave me the clue when you mentioned updating the browser. I have been mulling this over now for several days, reading a lot of stuff all over the web, searching out complaints and fixes. If you recall, the message would appear blank but when I would do View Source, the entire message was there. If I opened a message and it was blank, and I hit reply or forward, and then convert to plain text – the message would appear in plain text. SO from that I knew the message was not corrupted. This was not spreading and affecting mroe and more messages, causing them to become unreadable either.

Then I tried putting the cursor over a blank message and holding the left mouse button down. If the message was truly blank, the cursor would have said steady as a rock. But after a second the cursor would flicker and tremble, and I would see quickly alternating hourglass and pointer, probably a hundredth of a second apart.

So that made me think Windows Mail was attempting to read the message or highlight perhaps, but could not because something was blocking it.

Over and over I considered using a restore point. MS had updated me with all sorts of crazy stuff for things I don’t have or don’t use or didn’t ever want. I decided instead to revert to IE 9. I did, and then removed the patch that had been put in that was necessary before IE 10 could be instaled. It is a troublemaker, causes BSODs and claims there is a page fault when there is none if you have a hybrid graphics card like what came with my HP. Its number, for the record, is KB2670838 and on the HP site, over 40,000 people have read the information on it. Anyway, I got rid of that. MS has a patch out for that patch now, for people with IE 10 and I assume most of them already have it.

So now I was on IE 9. It did not help with Windows Mail. The same messages were still blank. Then I remembered something.

When I first got this computer, I got rid of 9 pretty quick because it would not display some pages and was very slow, and I could not find a solution. I reverted to IE8. Five months later, after struggling with Windows Live Mail and giving up, I installed Windows Mail.

So tonight, I got rid of 10 and then 9, and then, I reverted to IE 8 a few minutes ago. And – lo and behold – my Windows Mail no longer has any blank messages. The ones that were blank are now readable.

My fear was that some security patch that had been installed would still block messages from being visible, and that even reverting to IE 8 would not help. But so far, it looks like that is not the case. If I see more problems, I will start uninstalling patches, beginning with useless ones that are for things I don’t even have on this machine,

I remember now that Outlook Express used Word’s dictionary for spelling, and that Word, OE and IE all seemed to affect each other. And since Windows Mail is an updated OE, well, it makes sense that the browser would have somehow had a hand in causing blank messages.

And if all else failed, I was going to use a restore point. I’d already backed up my messages, and was about to start on other stuff that needed to be done, just in case. My mail was going to a Mac and I was using that for reading and writing messages until all this got fixed, and they were all being stored on my ISPs server anyway so I wasn’t worried about that either. Apple Mail is ok but a bit annoying in some ways. But at least it is safe from IE’s clutches .

I would like to add keywords to this post so others can find it with a search. But I don’t see a way to do that. How do I add keywords at this point?

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It is unfortunate you had to revert to a browser that old. Newer versions of IE, particularly IE10 & IE11) are much better in terms of standards compliance, stability, and security.

BTW, newer versions of Office (2010 & 2013 for sure) don’t use IE to render HTML email. They use Word which has its own HTML engine.

Not sure about keywords.

Joe

--Joe

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Well, I agree, it is too bad but, truly, I don’t mind having IE 8 since I don’t use it. It really makes no difference to me. Chrome is fine, and FireFox works well too. But Windows Mail is a part of my life all day long so what matters most to me is that it works. Also, I use Word 2003, so coupled with IE 9 or 10, that may be why random mails were blank. Just a thought.

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Glad you got it resolved.

Joe

--Joe

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