Bug! Pop Peeper locks up with “Gmail” set as the Server type & the account is at the top of the list of active accounts.

[tomigun]

Pop Peeper locks after the Check Mail Startup Delay reaches 0 with “Gmail” set as the Server type and no emails are downloaded for any accounts.
The Check Mail Startup Delay counter stays at 0.
If you try to do anything it says “Not Responding” in the top of the window.
If you wait for 60s and not interact with the program the “Check Mail Startup Delay: 0” program unlocks and the “29 Minutes(s) remaining until next mail check” starts counting down. And still no email are down loaded, if you try to interact with the program it locks up.


No emails are downloaded under these conditions only.

1. The account is at the top of the list in the accounts list in active accounts.
2. The Gmail account is active.
3. Pop Peeper is started with “Auto Check” ticked and the “Check Mail Startup Delay:” reaches 0
4. Pop Peeper is started and “Auto Check” is ticked and “Check Mail” is used above “Auto Check” before the “Check Mail Startup Delay:” reaches 0 (right click task bar icon)

The offending Gmail account and program can be made to work by

1. right clicking on the offending Gmail account and “Check Mail” before the countdown time has reached 0
2. opening any account Edit window and waiting for the countdown time has reached 0
3. opening and closing any account Edit window and waiting for the countdown time has reached 0
4. The offending Gmail account is NOT at the top of the list in the accounts
5. The offending Gmail account is not set to “Gmail” set as the Server type
6. The offending Gmail account is not active.
7. Disabling the offending Gmail account before “Check Mail Startup Delay:” reaches 0 and then enabling the account after it start to download emails from other accounts, then pressing “Check Mail”

Pop Peeper Versions https://i.imgur.com/NcqAgJx.png

Something makes the program lockup when the Gmail account is set to “Gmail” set as the Server type and it is at the top of the list of active accounts.

Also No error message are displayed except “Not Responding” when it locks up.

[Jeff]

Thanks for the detailed report. Finding the pattern is the single most important factor in troubleshooting.

However, I was not able to duplicate the issue.

How did you discover this -- Had you just moved the gmail account to the top, was it a new gmail account, or had it been working successfully previously with the gmail account on top?

Can you tell me what other types of accounts you have, and the order in which it causes the problem?
e.g. Gmail, POP3, Imap, Pop3, etc.

What is your "maximum simultaneous threads" set to under Options / Mail Check (if you don't see it: enable "advanced options" on the 'General' page)

Did you ever revert back to the "gmail on top" scenario after making any other changes to make sure that it still caused the problem? As a sanity check, could you try going back to that scenario to make sure that it still exhibits the bad behavior?

Do you have any other gmail accounts that you could try moving to the top of the list to see if that gmail account also causes the problem?

[tomigun]

Hi Jeff sorry for not answering your questions but you should see the results for yourself.
You should be able to duplicate the problem with the sequence of events below on a new installation.
The problem has been reproduced on another PC
After a lot of testing, I came up with a process for you to try

1. Copy contents of zip Pop Peeper onto a newly created network folder on a network computer - Must be a network computer
2. Run Pop peeper from the network computer folder.
3. Select all default options except for
3a. Setup: Data Location, chose “Store data for portability” option – Important Must chose this option
3b. Security set to High
4. Don’t nun at windows startup
https://i.imgur.com/DSa8JUX.png
5. Pop Peeper Pro expired window, close & Cancel New Account Welcome window
6. Goto – Tools – Options – Message retrieval – change POP3 option https://i.imgur.com/4HZ88GY.png to Headers https://i.imgur.com/nCONK3j.png
6a. Press OK
7. Goto – Tools – Options Mail Check – scheduling – change to “Check mail after delay”
7a. Press OK

Creating pop Gmail account
8. Create account with wizard
9. Create Single account
10. Input your email address https://i.imgur.com/KuRGIMt.png https://i.imgur.com/lPTjeMQ.png
10a. change IMAP to pop3 in Server type https://i.imgur.com/AA16YQ9.png
11. Name the account Gmail pop3 and put in your password.
12. Finish

Creating gmail Gmail account
13. Create account with wizard
14. Create Single account
15. Input your email address https://i.imgur.com/nBfCpay.png
15a. You get https://i.imgur.com/YFs7eLz.png with server type set to IMAP
16. Press Next
17. Name the account “1 Gmail gmail” and put in your password.
18. Finish
19. Edit “1 Gmail gmail” account
20. Change IMAP https://i.imgur.com/YGPQKxN.png to Gmail in *Server type: https://i.imgur.com/fiOqnCI.png
21. Update

22. Close window, exit out of PoP peeper
23. Run Pop peeper from the network computer folder

You should see the effect as mentioned in original post.
Show enabled checkbox for ease of activation of accounts
This is the result of pressing Check Mail it does nothing and locks up
https://i.imgur.com/mbqQiI1.png
If you wait for a little while then press the STOP button, the STOP button will soon turn into a “Check Mail “ then you can disable either account and it works.

[Jeff]

Fascinating. Bug confirmed.

Some of my own notes:

- At step 3/a -- PP doesn't think it has write access to the network folder. You'll get a prompt that PP won't be able to save the data; press "yes" to continue (PP *will* be able to save data)

- Change the delay under Tools / PPtweaker / Connection (I chose 5 seconds; allows time to perform some tests like edit account first)
- The accounts don't have to be real, I used gibberish login/password and got your results

- Setting "max simultaneous threads" to 1 allows it to work (tested with 2 accounts, either one first)
- I added a 3rd account (hotmail/imap) and with 2 threads, it prevented the problem; even if it was the 3rd account and disabled; deleted the account and problem returned.
- In an admission of "I don't understand Windows at all" -- I copied the folder from the network drive to a local folder (the local folder was created); I then ran PP using the *network* drive again -- and it works. I delete the contents of the local folder, test *network* drive: works. Finally, delete the local folder (which is already empty, mind you), and it fails. The local folder I made is a random folder on a random drive -- it should have absolutely nothing to do with the network drive. As bizarre as the original issue is, this one really leaves me puzzled.

- When the problem occurs, PP doesn't even try to do anything (client/server logs are empty)

I'll investigate this further and let you know what I find. Thanks for the detailed report!


btw, what version of Windows do you have? I tested on Win10 x64 with the latest Fall Creators Update.

[Jeff]

This was a doozy, but I've found and fixed the problem.

The key ingredient was having a webmail and ssl account check simultaneously on the initial checkmail. But it's very much a timing issue. Why the network drive was important to this timing: my suspicion is that it slowed down the loading of the SSL and webmail plugins to exploit the timing.

I made several changes, any one of which would have fixed the problem. But each change was also a change for efficiency; not that they should be noticeable, it may save a few cpu cycles a day.

I'd really appreciate it if you would be willing to test and confirm the fix. I still have a lot of cleaning up to do, so it's not ready yet. But if you could reply here and/or send me an email (support at esumsoft dot com), I'll let you know when it's ready (should be in the next day or two).

[tomigun]

Wow, what efficiency,

I would have expected you to have taken ages to solve this or just found a quick fix, one that I mentioned, this been a tricky problem as it was.
I reckon I would have spent more time on this then you did fixing it.
I was having 2nd thoughts about reporting this problem as I did have a way around it, and thought it would be too hard to fix.

one of the fixes was just discovered was
On the pop gmail account settings
The incoming server is set to pop.gmail.com https://i.imgur.com/e3uAq3D.png
changing incoming server Using the New Account: Auto-config setting
makes it https://i.imgur.com/9kcFCGk.png imap.gmail.com
and that fixes the problem in the example
changing the incoming server manually back to pop.gmail.com https://i.imgur.com/3SkKIFc.png and leaving all the other setting also makes it still work for the 2 email example.

I don't mind testing it out for you.

I'll send you an email also.

[Jeff]

In most cases, if it's possible to reproduce the issue as consistently as was in this case, it's usually pretty easy to fix the problem. In this case, once I started working on the problem, I didn't stop until I had the ultimate solution and it took a lot longer than I expected. But such can be the case with deadlocks because it's not always obvious what's going on, and most of the time it took was figuring out which critsects were causing the deadlock, and the fact that I had to run it from a network folder to produce the issue didn't help

I never tried using imap instead of pop3. Theoretically, the problem should still have potential (because it's the loading of the SSL plugin that's the relevant factor), but it's possible that the difference between pop3 and imap throws the timing off enough.

I have not gotten an email from you (the email gives me a visual reminder that I'm less likely to overlook).