| Microsoft fixes Windows Mobile 6.1 email bug |
Nov. 11, 2008
Microsoft has patched a Windows Mobile 6.1 bug that left some users unable to send messages until they deleted and recreated their email accounts. The "Windows Mobile 6.1 POP and IMAP Send Mail Patch" is downloadable now, the company says.
(Click here for a larger view of the error message associated with the email bug in Windows Mobile 6.1) The Windows Mobile 6.1 bug first began surfacing several months ago, on blogs and online forums, including Microsoft's Windows Mobile support site. According to a variety of posters, the problem occurred on many different Windows Mobile 6.1 devices, including those that were upgraded from Windows Mobile 6 and had previously been able to email without problems.
Posting on the U.K. site "Tracy and Matt's Blog," for example, Matt (whose last name we were unable to discover online) wrote of discovering the frustrating problem in August, after he upgraded his HTC TyTn II to Windows Mobile 6.1. According to Matt, he was able to send one email from his IMAP4 account via SMTP, but every attempt to send email thereafter failed.
As word of the identical problem spread to other online forums, Matt reportedly worked with contacts at Microsoft to resolve it, and eventually even sent his TyTn II to the company. After a few weeks, he received an email from a Microsoft employee, anonymously quoted as calling the bug a "horribly unfortunate side effect" of a feature added to Windows Mobile 6.1.
Because some service providers block sending of email via an SMTP server that is not on their network, a registry key was added to the operating system that lets carriers specify a backup SMTP server, to be used if the user-specified SMTP server fails. If the backup server address succeeds, it apparently becomes the new OS default.
Unfortunately, the Microsoft Windows Mobile team member was reported as adding, the bug rears its ugly head if OEMs do not enter an IP address for a backup SMTP server, as they were meant to do. End users cannot fix the problem by editing the registry key, since it is an OEM-protected key. The only solution, therefore, is deleting and recreating the account -- which will reportedly work normally, but only until the next SMTP failure.
Tracy and Matt's Blog offered downloadable .CAB files and registry fixes that were said to solve the problem. But now, thanks to Microsoft's official fix, these third-party patches are no longer necessary. The "Windows Mobile 6.1 POP and IMAP Send Mail Patch" restores normal email operation to all Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and Standard devices, according to the company.
Further information
For further information on the Windows Mobile 6.1 SMTP email bug, see our earlier coverage, here. For forum threads on the problem on MSDN or Tracy and Matt's Blog, see here and here, respectively.
To download the official fix in .CAB format, for direct installation on a device, or .MSI format, for installation via Windows Vista or Windows XP PCs, see Microsoft's website, here.
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