Don Davidson Computer / Bugs in Incredimail

Bugs in Incredimail
From Annoyances.org and Others
Aug 2002 to Oct 2006

User Groups & Email

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I tried to uninstall Incredimail after realizing it was a complete e-mail system,
not just some silly gimmicks you could add to your OE e-mails.

I removed it via the Add/Remove Program in the Control Panel,
but when I checked my Program Files, there was still a folder for it.

I tried to delete the folder, but IMShExt.dll would not "delete". I went
through regedit and removed everything I thought was part of the program,
as someone in your column suggested, but still couldn't delete it.

I finally did a system restore, choosing the day prior to installation....
The file was still in my Program Files, but I was able to delete it.

I had downloaded the program after reading about in PCWorld.com.
If I can, I will write to them, and tell them that uninstalling Incredimail takes
hours. Not to mention that the description for the program is extremely
misleading! And forget about technical support!

I would suggest to anyone with this problem to try the System Restore
option before going through all this trouble.
It's under Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools.
Just don't forget to update all your programs after the restore--
especially the antispyware and antivirus programs!

Let the "downloader" beware! "Google" "reviews" of any software
program before downloading it!

I am really irritated at what happened with Incredimail...It took up
a lot of valuable time to solve it--I hope the problem has been solved!

Robin

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Incredimail has be crashing my system on a regular basis and I really just
want to get this crap OFF my machine. The only thing worse than the program
is their support...which is non-existent. Does anyone have a phone number for
these people? Thanks...Steve
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Hey Steve, Yah I went through the same thing. It looks real good at first until you
discover IT DON'T WORK. The only recourse I found was to flame them real good
every day for a week and manually uninstall their crap. First look at the program
files until you can identify them. Then uninstall program with add/remove, then
use a registry cleaner like RegCleaner or RegVac and remove all identifiable
references. Then reconfigure your regular E-mail client. Good Luck Dave

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Forget the phone number, but the automatic uninstall doesn't remove it all. I had
nothing but problems and errors with that program. I think it could even crash your
system, if you keep it long enough! One month was enough for me.

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Do a search in the registry for "IncrediMail". I easily got rid of it, because I
knew where to look, too. Mostly there are a lot of keys one after another in the
same area, so it wasn't too difficult. It does leave enough behind, where I believe
it could cause problems!

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Same problem. Does anyone have a phone number for IncrediMail? Their customer
service is nonexistant unless you are a paying customer. (which I am not). I lost my
entire address book and saved emails when I deinstalled it. Anyone have any ideas
how to get them back? Terri

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IncrediMail is very hard to uninstall. Even if you run a custom Uninstall and select
every item to be removed, the folder Program Files\IncrediMail\bin remains, with
the undeletable file imshext.dll in it. You can only delete this file and its parent
folders by removing every reference to them in the Registry, booting your computer
from a DOS boot disk, going to the Program Files\IncrediMail\bin folder, deleting
the imshext.dll file and then removing the Program Files\IncrediMail folder.

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The incredi(feces)mail program started crashing my system, not allowing my monitor
to initialize, and freezing this and that like a rabid dog.

I uninstalled it by using the uninstall program in control panel, then using the
search for files feature, searched for files named incredimail and deleted them,
then I changed the imshext.dll file.

Then I went to start/run/regedit and searched for "incredimail" and deleted every
reference to it and lastly I rebooted after running regclean. That did it, finally.

A total pain in the @$$.

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I made the file "imshext.dll" emty but i couldn't save that..help me pls....thx

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Hi there I am responsible for sending out email newsletters to a database of
subscribed users and recently we have begun to have people using Incredimail
report problems when reading our HTML format emails. Apparently the entire
app crashes. As other people here have noted the makers of Incredimail don't
seem very keen to provide support so I am trying to figure out what in our
newsletter format causes this.

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If anyone can please help me. I am not a computer whiz, but i downloaded
incredimail and it worked fine for a year, then it suddenly stated crashing.
I downloaded and installed the upgrade and it totally buggered up the program.
All my folders are now called Work and I can't send emails. HELP!!!!

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Posted by Dan
Is Incredimail 'bugged'? Do all instances of this download contain a time-bomb?
Or is her instance unique to this application? I'd really like to know, because I'm
considering using this app, but don't want the hassles if it's going to cause
problems. Thanks, Dan

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Hi Dan, IncrediMail is incredibly buggy and very hard to unsintall. It may even
contain spyware. I would not use it if I were you. You may wish to do a Google
search for "incredimail bugs" or "incredimail spyware" or "incredimail trouble"
and see what you come up with. Goodl luck, Avner

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Posted by sudhir kumaresh
sir/madam use regcleaner.exe to clean the registry select the software to be
uninstall in the uninstall menu and go ahead. its not possible to remove through
incredi's unintall. use outlook, all the datas will be inside program
files/incredimail/identities/

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Posted by Pascale   [find other messages by Pascale]
hi, I am using Windows Millenium and I would like to go back from Incredimail
to Outlook Express because I have been experiencing different kinds of bugs
since I installed Incredimail. How can I export my messages to Outlook express?
Do I have to convert my message files to text files (.eml) and if yes, how?
Thank you! Pascale

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Need a lot of Help

Hi, I just found this group last night and joined. My name is Charlotte. I have
a major problem with Incredimail. I will try to explain and see if any one can
help me.

I have been using Incredimail about ayear now. I have AOL and have had to
use yahoo for sending and receive Incredimail. In April I had to start paying for
this service to be able to keep using Incredimail. Then after I started paying,
I had trouble and couldn't send mail. Some way I was able to get it to work
again. Since September 11, I have not been able to send or receive mail.
Can not get an answer from Incredimail, since I don't pay them for their service,
they don't answer till they answer their paying customers. I have been dealing
with yahoo for a week and I have done everything they said to do, still will not work.
They told me yesterday to get another email server. Is there anyone who has a
different server than yahoo that you use Incredimail on? Would you please tell
me who it is and how to reach them and is there a cost to use them and how much.
Let me tell what is going on and maybe someone in this group can help me.
I keep getting this when I try to sign in or try to send mail. "Authorization failure"
5005.5.1 command unrecognized: "Auth Login" I have added a new username
and password, checked all the incoming mail and outgoing mail server, have
checked the box for "My server requires authentication" I have done all the Incredimail
trouble page said to do.

It is awful to not be able to use Incredimail and just done know how to fix it.
It would be a blessing if someone could help me with this.

Thank you ,
Charlotte

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Hi Charlotte!

It sounds to me like Yahoo is requiring some kind of authentication that is not
supported by Incredimail. I don't use Yahoo, so I do not know what sort of
authentication they might require, but Incredimail does support the common ones.

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Note:
Although the "free" version does in fact cost you nothing, it does come with plenty
of advertising messages that appear as you use the program. And, when you send
email using Incredimail, the person receiving your message will also see a prominent
announcement indicating the message was created using the Incredimail program.

One thing to keep in mind is that even though you may send an email using
Incredimail, featuring backgrounds and cartoon characters, the recipients of your
messages may not always see these gizmos. Those who have older computers
and who use "web mail" services like Hotmail and Yahoo, may not be able to
view all your creations.
_____________________

From
Newsletter service of Langa Consulting
10-10-2002

6) IncrediMail Problems (Part One)
I'm a network administrator for a large Reservation in Minnesota. One of my users
asked me if it would be all right to install a new E-mail client package called Incredimail,
I checked out the http://www.incredimail.com website and noticed stellar
recommendations from Cnet, ZDnet, and Tucows so I downloaded the demo to check it out.
What I found in the user agreement for the software was pretty unbelievable, obviously the
people who recommended this software didn't read it. The agreement itself is extremely
long... but the attached excerpt from the agreement almost knocked me out of my chair:

"10. UNSOLICITED MATERIALS
Any confidential, secret or proprietary information or other material submitted or sent to
IncrediMail, including without limitation via any Message sent by You through the Service,
Site, or IncrediMail's physical mail and e-mail addresses, or in any other way, will be
deemed to be not confidential or secret. By submitting or sending information or other
material to IncrediMail or by posting information on any portion of the Service you
(a) Warrant that you have all rights of any kind to the material and that to the best of
your knowledge no other party has any rights to the material; and (b) Grant IncrediMail
an unrestricted, perpetual, irrevocable license to use, reproduce, display, perform, modify,
transmit and distribute the material, and you further agree that IncrediMail is free to use
any ideas, know-how, concepts or techniques you send us or post on the Service for any
purpose, without any compensation to you or any other person."

I'm not a reactionary person by nature but the implication of that paragraph for the average
user is staggering. I always tell my users to read every agreement carefully but of course
many don't, this agreement is especially long and loaded with legalspeak to further guarantee
that the average person won't read it all. People are ultimately responsible for their own
actions but I believe that this particular company goes way too far in misleading people
about their ultimate goal and someone needs to shine a light on them and make people
aware of what's really going on, at least then they can make an informed choice about
using the service. I'm a subscriber to several technical newsletters and I'm writing to all
of them. Thank you for your time, love your newsletter. --- E. McPhail

Some of that language is similar to that used by other mail services and ISPs to get around
copyright issues that can innocently arise when proprietary information is sent through a
third party--- for example, it's not uncommon for an ISP to want to ensure they're not violating
a copyright if they merely store a copy of your mail on their servers while it's being processed.

But I can't think of any innocent reason for the phrasing that states "... IncrediMail is free
to use any ideas, know-how, concepts or techniques you... post on the Service for any
purpose, without any compensation to you or any other person." Maybe there is a perfectly
inoffensive reason for including that, but it eludes me.

There's another reason not to like IncrediMail, too: It's HTML-based, which not only opens
the door to all manner of web-borne security threats that are absent from text-based email,
but also adds tons of baggage to outbound IncrediMail email. This extra baggage can clog
the inboxes of recipients of these mails, even if the recipients aren't IncrediMail users.

For example, the headers of email sent by Outlook Express might take this simple form:

From: [user name and address]
To: {recipient's name and address}
Subject:
Date:
MIME-Version 1.0 Content-Type multipart/mixed;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0007_01C263C7.DB858E80"
X-Priority 3
X-MSMail-Priority Normal
X-Mailer Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

But here's an actual IncrediMail header, snipped from a reader's note to me:

From: [user name and address]
To: {recipient's name and address}
Subject:
Date:
Content-Type Multipart/related;type="multipart/alternative";boundary=
"------------Boundary-00=_NVWB7TH0000000000000"
X-Mailer IncrediMail 2001 (1750710)
X-FID 9FF122EE-7F22-11D4-AE37-00010216CD0D
X-FVER 2.0
X-FIT Letter
X-FCOL Autumn
X-FCAT Nature
X-FDIS Vine Fall
X-Extensions SU1CTDEsNDEsgUmBScU4OIWRkSwsTZ04kZFNhYUoiU0k
LJWdTYGBgYWBkYWZNCiBKEksSU1CTDIsMCwsSU1CTDMsMCws
X-BG <AC3B86DB-D55F-11D6-88F7-444553540000>
X-BGT repeat
X-BGC #f5e0c3
X-BGPX 0px
X-BGPY 0px
X-ASN A5BE2A00-37CC-11D4-BA36-0050DAC68030
X-ASNF 0
X-ASH A5BE2A00-37CC-11D4-BA36-0050DAC68030
X-ASHF 1
X-AN 6486DDE0-3EFD-11D4-BA3D-0050DAC68030
X-ANF 0
X-AP 6486DDE0-3EFD-11D4-BA3D-0050DAC68030
X-APF 1
X-AD C3C52140-4147-11D4-BA3D-0050DAC68030
X-ADF 0
X-AUTO X-ASN,X-ASH,X-AN,X-AP,X-AD
X-CNT ;
X-Priority 3

Note that none of that is the actual email message, it's just the typical extra baggage
IncrediMail adds to the email header before you even get to the message itself:
An extra 600 characters or so (call it roughly 5 kilobits) of code that must be sent
by the mailer, processed by the ISPs of both the mailer and the recipient, and then
downloaded and processed by the recipient for each and every IncrediMail message
sent. Yikes! HTML email is bloated anyway, but man, IncrediMail pushes it to new extremes.

Yes, IncrediMail provides amusing, all-singing, all dancing, animated, colored, formatted,
flashing, bleeping, burping emails--- but with the certainty of tons of excess baggage
riding along with the email; with the possibility of opening the door to malicious HTML-borne
worms, viruses, and such; and with serious questions about who owns the content of the
messages you send using their system.

No, thanks.
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I found your news group about Incredimail problems from 2002 and thought you might like to hear about this one. They are still having problems BIG TIME!

Yes, I am using the free Incredimail email program and yesterday, after I spent an hour or so cleaning up my address book, I left and came back a few hours later only to find that my address book was completely cleaned out - not one address left. Now, when I send emails, I have to enter the addresses into the system again, but they disappear when I shut down my computer. As I do frequently anyway, I ran Panda and updated Norton and found no viruses on my system whatsoever. I also noted on the Incredimail web site that they had just installed some changes to their system yesterday as well. Wonder if that caused this disastrous problem....

And of course, the litany is the same as it was back in 2002. They have no help that actually helps. They send you an email that doesn't address your problems. They keep referring you to their FAQs, which don't address Incredimail wiping out your entire address book every time you shut off your computer! And of course, their excuse is that they don't serve the non-paying members unless they have time after serving their paying customers. How do they expect to attract users for their paying system if they have such problems????

Heinz Tschabitscher, the email expert at about.com sent me info about retrieving part of your information (presumably including the address book) from Incredimail's backup or IM data folder, but why the heck do I want to recover it from Incredimail only to have it wiped out again when I shut off my system??? The only reason I would recover it is to save them for use in another email program.

And now, I understand from your group that getting rid of the infernal program is difficult. But with all the direction your group provides, I think I'll be able to do it. I was also horrified by that part of their Terms of Use that effectively renders all material passed through their server theirs for the keeping. What is that racket?? Jeese L...