IMAP Timeout's with Outlook

[MartynK 1]

I am running the latest version of Internet Security on a fully patched Windows 10 Pro PC using Outlook 365.

When I installed Internet Security it broke Outlook talking to my email server using IMAP.

Looking at the logs on the server (I have had these reviewed by the developers) the server is timing out while waiting from a response from the client.

I have tried all sorts, turning off the firewall, AV, etc etc, but I cannot get this working.

The only thing that solves the problem is to uninstall Internet Security.

I have tried on the same PC without any AC and with another vendors product and I don't have issues.

Anyone have any ideas ?

[Marcos 5,074]

Does temporarily disabling integration with Outlook make a difference or only disabling IMAP scanning does?

[MartynK 1]

It seems that only uninstalling Internet Security makes the difference.
I cannot workout what actually causes the issue directly.

Edited August 11, 2020 by MartynK

[Marcos 5,074]

Could you also try disabling protocol filtering in the advanced setup?

[Japester 0]

I remember having a similar problem last year when installing on a new laptop. The solution which worked for me was to uncheck "Enable IMAPS checking" :  >Advanced setup >Email client protection >Email Protocols. I'm no expert and don't know why this would work but maybe play around with it.

Hope this helps.

 

[MartynK 1]

So to add to my testing, I have tried all of the above and it works sometimes and sometimes it hangs up.

What I have found is if its just a number small of changes it "can" work, if for example I have the AV running on the PC when I first connect to the mailbox and IMAP downloads the email for the first time, then it can hang on large mailboxes.

Often closing Outlook will not shutdown the app properly and I need to either kill the remaining processes or reboot the PC.

To test this I have had two VMs running side by side, one with no AV and one with.

I need to play even more.

[itman 1,659]

9 hours ago, MartynK said:

What I have found is if its just a number small of changes it "can" work, if for example I have the AV running on the PC when I first connect to the mailbox and IMAP downloads the email for the first time, then it can hang on large mailboxes.

Check mark the highlighted setting per below screenshot and see if it solves this issue:

[MartynK 1]

I already have the one disabled, it does not seem to be the issue.

I would say with ESET installed, I am seeing about a 25% speed difference in general, but the hang ups are the main issue as once Outlook stops getting updates, as I said above, you can only Kill Outlook or reboot.

 

[Peter Randziak 1,130]

Hello @MartynK,

The Internet protection module 1401 (not yet available as of now) should improve the download speeds for IMAP...

How it behaved with the IMAPs checking disabled as suggested by Japester?

On 8/13/2020 at 11:50 AM, Japester said:

to uncheck "Enable IMAPS checking" :  >Advanced setup >Email client protection >Email Protocols.

Disable it only for testing purposes and re-enable it back as it impacts the level of protection.

Peter

[MartynK 1]

30 minutes ago, Peter Randziak said:

Hello @MartynK,

The Internet protection module 1401 (not yet available as of now) should improve the download speeds for IMAP...

How it behaved with the IMAPs checking disabled as suggested by Japester?

Disable it only for testing purposes and re-enable it back as it impacts the level of protection.

Peter

I have not had chance to check yet, had the Mail server developer on the system all day.
Add to that the latest Office 365 version of Outlook does not seem to be creating a IMAP debug log when debugging is switched on, so MS is looking at that one also.

Will be back with some more details as soon as I can.

[MartynK 1]

Hi,

So I have tested with the IMAP settings on and off, it does not really make a lot of difference if the number of changes on the mailbox is small.

Looking more, it seems that if the mailbox has a large number of changes, maybe on a single folder, then the big problems start.

[Marcos 5,074]

What about leaving IMAP scanning enabled but disabling integration with MS Outlook? Do you have a lot of emails directly in the Inbox folder? If so, how many approximately?

[MartynK 1]

22 minutes ago, Marcos said:

What about leaving IMAP scanning enabled but disabling integration with MS Outlook? Do you have a lot of emails directly in the Inbox folder? If so, how many approximately?

I don't have many emails in my inbox, currently around 15, but some of my other folders like sent items has almost 7,000 and over 2.6GB in size.

I think I will reset my test box and start a full download of email again and see what happens.

The more I look on this, the more it seems that when you have a folder with a large volume of email, it is having problems.

[Marcos 5,074]

It's quite strange because:
- the IMAP scanner only affect the email that you are downloading
- the Outlook plug-in indexes only emails in the Inbox folder after installation, ie. not repeatedly.

Let's try it with integration to MS Outlook disabled to see if it makes a difference.

 

[MartynK 1]

Hi,
So finally got some tests running over a number of PCs, all running Windows 10, Office 365, latest and greatest patches for all and have the following mixed results. All I did was start Outlook and left to their own devices while email came in and got processed. I monitored what was happening mailbox wise via webmail so I could see what "should" be happening as a first test.

1. No AV - updates pretty much real time.
2. ESet, everything switched on - Very slow, almost sometimes no updates.
3. ESet , Outlook integration off - Quicker, but still not fast.
4. ESet, All email integration off - Almost instant.
5. Alternate AV, with integration on, Almost instant.

A second test was pressing the "Send and Receive all folders" button, this did have various results with Outlook just stopping, some needed killing via Task Manager as when I tried to close Outlook it just crashed.

In saying all of this, nothing was perfect and I do think latency has a bearing on this as I believe things work better when the server is local. The alternate AV works on email once delivered as I understand, does not do any protocol level integration.

A big problem I have is the latest versions of Outlook seem to have trashed on the IMAP logging, so even if you do switch logging on then the IMAP logfile does not get created. I raised a support call with MS on this, had 2 different people over 2 days and 3 hours working on my PC before they agreed and said yes, logging is not working. They will pass the issue back to their engineering. So this does mean its hard to see what IMAP is doing client wise. I have one VM running with an older version of Outlook and I have seen timeouts on that when AV was installed and running.

Not sure where to go from here.

 

[Marcos 5,074]

Unfortunately it is not clear what you mean by nr. 4 - all email integration off.

Does disabling only protocol filtering make a big difference?

[xxJackxx 85]

I don't know if it makes a difference but out of curiosity, what kind of encryption are you using with your IMAP connection? None, SSL, TLS, Auto? I haven't seen it mentioned yet. Might be worth exploring. I have mine set to auto and I have no issues.

[MartynK 1]

 

18 minutes ago, Marcos said:

Unfortunately it is not clear what you mean by nr. 4 - all email integration off.

Does disabling only protocol filtering make a big difference?

All integration off means, all protocol and outlook integration, basically if I could see it was going to affect Outlook, I switched it off.

 

17 minutes ago, xxJackxx said:

I don't know if it makes a difference but out of curiosity, what kind of encryption are you using with your IMAP connection? None, SSL, TLS, Auto? I haven't seen it mentioned yet. Might be worth exploring. I have mine set to auto and I have no issues.

As for what encryption I am using, its set to SSL/TLS which seems to work best with the server.

[MartynK 1]

I have played with this on and off for days now and am getting nowhere really.

It looks like the answer is, if I have scanning of email protocols enabled, then its very random as to if things work.

Generally, Outlook gives up trying to download in most instances and the only way to get things going again is to restart Outlook.

Once email is up to date, as long as there are not a lot of changes to the inbox, it generally keeps up with changes as long as I don't touch Outlook and just let it process.

If for example, I select another folder that has multiple changes, then go back to the Inbox, it may  well just hang up Outlook.

If I switch off Email Protocol Scanning things seem to work.

[Marcos 5,074]

You can leave email protocol scanning off. With integration enabled the plug-in will scan any email that you receive, read or send.

Since you have narrowed it down to email protocol filtering, please carry on as follows:
- enable advanced logging under Help and support -> Details for technical support
- receive email to reproduce the issue
- stop logging
- collect logs with ESET Log Collector and upload the generated archive here.
 

[MartynK 1]

On 9/6/2020 at 3:13 PM, Marcos said:

You can leave email protocol scanning off. With integration enabled the plug-in will scan any email that you receive, read or send.

Since you have narrowed it down to email protocol filtering, please carry on as follows:
- enable advanced logging under Help and support -> Details for technical support
- receive email to reproduce the issue
- stop logging
- collect logs with ESET Log Collector and upload the generated archive here.
 

The problem I have is it can take a long time to notice when an issue happens unless your just watching the screen all the time.

Working out the exact log section to extract and upload will take time, which I don't really have at the moment.

I will try and get back to this in a while when I have a little more time.

[ertooso 0]

It seems that only uninstalling Internet Security makes the difference. I cannot workout what actually causes the issue directly.

Edited September 19, 2020 by ertooso

[Marcos 5,074]

30 minutes ago, ertooso said:

It seems that only uninstalling Internet Security makes the difference. I cannot workout what actually causes the issue directly.

You have posted in another user's topic. Do you too use MS Outlook and receive email via IMAP(S)? Does temporarily disabling IMAP(S) scanning or integration with MS Outlook actually make a difference?

[ertooso 0]

I stopped using Outlook long ago. I use Gmail postal service. And I normally use it directly from the browser. I am from Texas, worldpostalcode.com/united-states/texas/dallas. And it is always some problems with Outlook here. And Gmail is very convenient to reach from any gadget and from all possible locations. So I made my choice. Who else is using this service?

[Marcos 5,074]

44 minutes ago, ertooso said:

I stopped using Outlook long ago. I use Gmail postal service. And I normally use it directly from the browser. I am from Texas, worldpostalcode.com/united-states/texas/dallas. And it is always some problems with Outlook here. And Gmail is very convenient to reach from any gadget and from all possible locations. So I made my choice. Who else is using this service?

You have hijacked MartynK's topic about Outlook and IMAP scanner causing performance issues. Please open a new topic and state disabling which of the protection modules makes a difference.