SOLVED! Microsoft System Center End Point Protection Failed to Remove Infected Mail in Thunderbird

Normally, Microsoft's SCEP is able to remove infected mails in Thunderbird without any difficulties. However, in rare situations it could repeatedly reported infections but failed to remove infected emails.

Added to the difficulty, the reported infected CANNOT be found anywhere in Thunderbird mailbox folder!!?

After some tests, studies and investigation, the cause is found! The infected mail is actually HIDDEN in Thunderbird, marked as available space, waiting for a "COMPACT" to release the space.

SOLUTION: Start your Thunderbird, right click on the infected mail folder, select "Compact". Once the mail folder is being compacted, the infected mail is removed and SCEP reported no more infection!!

I suspect similar problems also happens to users of Microsoft Security Essential and the built-in Windows Defender in Windows 8. It really sounds ridiculous that Microsoft antivirus will treat a deleted, hidden mail as a "production" mail.

TOOLS: You may want to verify if the "COMPACT" of the mail folder is effective. I found grepWin a good tool to use (http://stefanstools.sourceforge.net/grepWin.html). Another helpful tool is Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/), which actually can open, read and search Thunderbird mailbox files.

SOLVED! Windows Live Mail or Outlook Cannot Connect to Hotmail Account, Keep Asking for a Password

If you're using HOTMAIL or OUTLOOK.COM, and recently you have started the 2-STEP Verification (i.e., you've asked Microsoft to send you a verification code to verify your mobile device or computer), the chance is that YOU NEED TO ENTER THE App Password generated by Microsoft instead of the password you set for yourself.

SOLUTION:

1. From your web browser, logon HOTMAIL / OUTLOOK.COM mail. You can successfully logon, because your password is correct.
2. Go to your Account, Overview, then Security Settings
3. Scroll down the page to find the section "App Passwords"
4. Click on the click "Create a new App Password"
5. Copy the App Password and paste it on your Email Client (like Windows Live Mail or Outlook) when it prompts for a password. IT SHOULD BE THE APPS PASSWORD, NOT THE PASSWORD YOU YOURSELF MADE.

Sorry, life is getting complicated!!

SOLVED! Thunderbird Portable Takes Extremely Long to Load or Cannot Load

A friend has a copy of Thunderbird Portable installed on his computer for checking emails. After a month's using, it's getting unstable and suddenly one day it stops loading. He called me for help and here're some findings, then a possible FIX for you..., besides an overview of my troubleshooting steps.

The first thing I check, Task Manager, I see one instance of "thunderbirdportable.exe", but two instances of "thunderbird.exe". Obviously, these are from previous freeze, and he double clicked on the Thunderbird icon again. Stopping all these tasks won't help.

Then, I used PROCMON.exe (from Microsoft) to monitor what the thunderbird.exe is actually doing, and it seems that it's doing nothing...or maybe waiting, or even it's hanged...

I copied the whole Thunderbird folder (because it's a portable version) to my PC and started it. It started perfectly fine! Well, this is something related to the "SYSTEM" of his computer, not just with the Thunderbird...

I started to suspect the way Thunderbird is working, TEMP FILES!!! I checked and found out that there're 4,000+ temporary files in the temporary folder "C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Temp", which is also the folder that Thunderbird is storing some temporary files*. Most of the temporary files in this folder reported 0KB in file size.

SOLUTION: Delete temporary files from the folder "C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Temp". Then, restart Thunderbird again. Or, reboot and start Thunderbird. (if you do not know how to End Task of all Thunderbird processes)

*Notes: When Thunderbird starts, a temporary folder is being created in the user's TEMP folder, you may identify this folder by looking for a file with name "splash.jpg" inside the folder.

SOLVED! Microsoft Live Group Invitation Not Received

I've created a group in Microsoft SkyDrive, with a Group Calendar to share with my friends. In the past, I was able to send an email invitation to others. So users can check their mail, click on a button to join. Just the receivers will receive these invitation to join group in their Junk mail (this is unbelievable enough, Microsoft treated its own mails as "junk"!).

Recently, strange things happens, even in Junk box there's nothing found. The invitation to My Group is really sent, and if I try to send again, it told me that I'm still waiting for the user to reply...

After searching through so many settings at the user side, what I found is that Microsoft HAS CHANGED its way of handling invitations!

Solution: Ask the user to log in their Hotmail/Outlook account, go to People, Manage, View Invitations. There you go! REALLY, MICROSOFT IS UNBELIEVABLE!

Updated Solution:
Ask the user to log in their Hotmail/Outlook account, go to SkyDrive, Groups, View Group Invitation.

SOLVED! Outlook Sent Emails Go To Wrong Sent Items Tray

It's very common that an Outlook user will have several email accounts, some of these accounts are shared with work colleagues. When the user sending an email in behalf of a group, team, or department, he will want to have the Sent copy falls into the Sent Items tray under the related account, but not his personal Sent Items tray.

However, for some "unknown" reasons, sometimes users find mails like these will drop into their own Sent Items. That means, your work colleagues sharing the email account will not be able to keep track of these "Sent Out" emails.

To resolve the problem, try this:

• Set the DWORD value of the following registry key to 1:

Outlook 2007   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences\DelegateSentItemsStyle

Outlook 2010   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Preferences\DelegateSentItemsStyle

Close your Outlook and start again. It suppose to be a known issue of Outlook 2007, but sadly carries on unresolved to Outlook 2010.

Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972148/en-us