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Well, I agree, it is too bad but, truly, I don’t mind having IE 8 since I don’t use it. It really makes no difference to me. Chrome is fine, and FireFox works well too. But Windows Mail is a part of my life all day long so what matters most to me is that it works. Also, I use Word 2003, so coupled with IE 9 or 10, that may be why random mails were blank. Just a thought.

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

Joe, you gave me the clue when you mentioned updating the browser. I have been mulling this over now for several days, reading a lot of stuff all over the web, searching out complaints and fixes. If you recall, the message would appear blank but when I would do View Source, the entire message was there. If I opened a message and it was blank, and I hit reply or forward, and then convert to plain text – the message would appear in plain text. SO from that I knew the message was not corrupted. This was not spreading and affecting mroe and more messages, causing them to become unreadable either.

Then I tried putting the cursor over a blank message and holding the left mouse button down. If the message was truly blank, the cursor would have said steady as a rock. But after a second the cursor would flicker and tremble, and I would see quickly alternating hourglass and pointer, probably a hundredth of a second apart.

So that made me think Windows Mail was attempting to read the message or highlight perhaps, but could not because something was blocking it.

Over and over I considered using a restore point. MS had updated me with all sorts of crazy stuff for things I don’t have or don’t use or didn’t ever want. I decided instead to revert to IE 9. I did, and then removed the patch that had been put in that was necessary before IE 10 could be instaled. It is a troublemaker, causes BSODs and claims there is a page fault when there is none if you have a hybrid graphics card like what came with my HP. Its number, for the record, is KB2670838 and on the HP site, over 40,000 people have read the information on it. Anyway, I got rid of that. MS has a patch out for that patch now, for people with IE 10 and I assume most of them already have it.

So now I was on IE 9. It did not help with Windows Mail. The same messages were still blank. Then I remembered something.

When I first got this computer, I got rid of 9 pretty quick because it would not display some pages and was very slow, and I could not find a solution. I reverted to IE8. Five months later, after struggling with Windows Live Mail and giving up, I installed Windows Mail.

So tonight, I got rid of 10 and then 9, and then, I reverted to IE 8 a few minutes ago. And – lo and behold – my Windows Mail no longer has any blank messages. The ones that were blank are now readable.

My fear was that some security patch that had been installed would still block messages from being visible, and that even reverting to IE 8 would not help. But so far, it looks like that is not the case. If I see more problems, I will start uninstalling patches, beginning with useless ones that are for things I don’t even have on this machine,

I remember now that Outlook Express used Word’s dictionary for spelling, and that Word, OE and IE all seemed to affect each other. And since Windows Mail is an updated OE, well, it makes sense that the browser would have somehow had a hand in causing blank messages.

And if all else failed, I was going to use a restore point. I’d already backed up my messages, and was about to start on other stuff that needed to be done, just in case. My mail was going to a Mac and I was using that for reading and writing messages until all this got fixed, and they were all being stored on my ISPs server anyway so I wasn’t worried about that either. Apple Mail is ok but a bit annoying in some ways. But at least it is safe from IE’s clutches .

I would like to add keywords to this post so others can find it with a search. But I don’t see a way to do that. How do I add keywords at this point?

Good, when I finish work, I will go look at the chart!! Three years ago for SP 1? Then, I think this computer came with it already in place – probably .

Yes, SP 1 is installed… I think what I meant was, I forgot whether it was factory installed! I still can’t remember (embarrassed!!!!). So maybe I just installed around a hundred patches that came out after SP 1. I am now thinking that that is what I did. I have no idea what struck me… normally I am so ultra cautious and this time I didn’t even look at what they had available, I just told it to update. Kicking myself now.

I don’t know if IE is the problem. I did not attempt to make any changes – I was waiting to hear your thoughts on this. There are several other patches waiting but I did not install them – for the same reason.

Just saw your replies, and will now read them.

I am finding that all emails from one particular individual are blank. Emails from another are sometimes blank. I notice when I click Reply and put my cursor over the blank page where the original message is supposed to be, the cursor trembles and rapidly switches between an hourglass and a pointer. I think it is trying repeatedly to make the type show up on the page. I found today that on the email I have received that is blank, if I do Select All, Copy, and then paste, or paste-special into Word 2003, as plain text, the type instantly shows up on the Word doc. So it can be “read” by the select and copy and paste functions – but not *seen* by me.

Does this suggest any clues to anyone? I feel like it does, but I just don’t know enough to know what!!

Just an added note – I see I got Explorer 10 in that batch of stuff. I had rolled back to 8 because 9 did not work on my computer – pages did not load. I use Chrome and never IE – too slow – so I guess I don’t care unless it messed up something else for me… that I don’t know about. Also, thinking it over – it has been SO long since I have thought about Windows updates that I realize I am actually not sure if I just got SP 1 (that’s awful, not to remember if I already had it… must be slipping ). But truly, I just never thought about it. Do you know when SP1 came out? If it was before I got this computer, they would have included it, I think. (HP Pavilion Laptop, DV 7 series)

Hi Joe –
I just checked the remember me box so hopefully that’ll do it.

I looked at a number of different emails from different people and tried to compared through view source. Well, it’s bewildering. I was not able to find anything that was consistent among the blank ones. They all are text/plain for the first part of the message and all are text/html for the second part. There are a variety of charsets but I can’t pick any one that consistently gives a blank. I belong to a Yahoo group where a fellow moderator uses yahoo mail. His are now always blank unless I do reply or forward and convert it to plain text and then it is readable. I sent two to the group myself, one after the other. One is blank, the other is not. Both are using UFT 8 as encoding. Of course there are a ton of variables and I can’t even begin to guess how I could account for all of them to make a true comparison.

If a particular email is blank when I open it, that does not change. It will be blank next time I look at it too. I did try closing and reopening the mail program. I have not tried to reboot – I’m afraid to!!

I installed Windows 7’s service pack 1 just before this started and am wondering if that is the problem and if so, can I use a restore point to uninstall it.

I wish I knew where to find Susan Bradley’s list of patches not to install! I started to keep a list of them a long time ago but can’t find it now. There was one patch, I recall, that was said to damage Mail and that is why I never installed another update after I read that. I was always afraid one of them would mess up the mail program. I am kicking myself for installing it now. I should never have done that if that is, indeed, the cause of my problems.

Hi Joe,
Thanks for replying. (For some reason this page keeps logging me out instead of leaving me logged in – is there a setting I can change?) I don’t use any of the WL components, actually, but thank you for the warning. I’d forgotten Essentials even existed. Windows Mail has been absolutely flawless on Windows 7, despite having many many gigabytes of archived messages. (And yes, they are backed up on an external disk ).

I am looking for consistency and connections so will go do properties/view source to see if these are html. I kind of assumed most people write html messages these days but maybe not! I was ready to think the “new” Yahoo mail that was coming in to me from Yahoo Groups was going to give me all blanks but that doesn’t seem to be true either. I will post what I can determine so you can givie it a look.

PS Woody, I tried to give you a “thank you” but after I clicked Thanks, it said it was thanking Kathleen Atkins. I am thanking YOU, Woody! Please fix that thank you thing so that thanks are going to you and not her for your article on Turmoil (which was GREAT).

Hi Woody,
Thanks for a great, insightful article! For a long time I had the impression you didn’t mind Windows 8 too much but am glad to see that you firmly have stated now that you are not a fan of 8. If by “infamous ribbon” you mean that menu they use for Office 2007 and beyond — I hate it, bought Office 2007 and installed it, tried and tried to like it and gave up and reinstalled Office 2003 which is what I still use today, on Windows 7. I loved xp and had a hard time starting with Windows 7 but found ways to make it work more like XP and have been very happy with 7 ever since. I have my own copy of 7, so if I have to get another computer, I will remove 8 and install my own 7. Thank heavens I bought it. I use Outlook Express (Vista’s Windows Mail) on Windows 7 and it works perfectly. I will attempt to install it on any new version of Windows they come up with. That Windows Live Mail stunk and I will never use webmail. If forced, I will switch to a Mac and use Apple Mail, but I don’t really want to. I am hoping that Office will return to the menu bars we used in 2003. I no longer care what they do with IE because I moved to Chrome and Firefox years ago.

I appreciate your describing the three possible versions of Windows… Enterprise would be the one for me. I like tablets, like touch screens, but on my computer, I want keyboard and mouse. I wish MS would give up on phones and tablets and stick to satisfying the business users (including small at-home businesses), and those non-business users who where happy with Windows before MS went off on a crazed hunt for market share in tablets and phones.

Thanks, Clint. I just couldn’t figure out where to put it. I went to Google’s website and tried posting in their Calendar Sync forum threads and no answer at all to three posts.

Glenda,
I used to be able to use the email addresses but they are now changing them each time so that no longer works. Some ISPs have filters that catch a certain amount of spam so you never see it. If your mail provider lets you mark messages as spam before deleting, then they will also go after the spammers and find a way to add them to their automatic filters which does help over time if you do this consistently for a few weeks. You have to go to your mail online on their website to do this so if you see spam email in your computer’s inbox, just jump on over to the email on the provider’s website and delete the spam there.

Sometimes you can set up a rule for certain words that often turn up in spam like Vi–ra, or others, and you can easily put them into your message rules.But others are more tricky, like insurance or weight. You pretty much can’t really filter out all messages that have insurance in the subject line.

There are some repeat senders you can block like the ADT people or the ink people. You put in a rule that blocks anything with ADT in the sender line, for instance. If you are getting a lot of spam mail from the Mailbox Worm (the one with the blank subject line, no text, and just a link in the body of the email) you have to decide whether to email the sender and ask them to change their email password to lock out the worm (this doesn’t always do it), or just block all their mail from then on through message rules. There is no way to block all spam, that I know of. I seemed to be rid of most of it in Nov. and Dec. and now I’m getting a lot of it. I figure the spammers invented some new ways to get around my filters but when I have time, and I have figured out something in common among some of them, I’ll set up some new rule blocks. I do think that getting to your provider’s webmail quickly and turning in the spammers while they are still in the act of flooding my provider with spam has helped. I learned that from the site I used to use, http://www.spamcop.com

Kelliann

If I understand your question correctly…. the Storage section contains all the folders and messages within them that you imported from your old computer. I believe all you have to do is open any folder, Select All the messages, and drag them to whereever you want them – probably to the sent and to the draft folders up there under your primary account. I don’t think you can ever get rid of the inbox, sent, drafts, folders under “Storage Folders.” I think the folders are permanent even if they are empty. If you were an Outlook Express or vista Windows Mail user you may want to go to http://www.sevenforums.com and learn how you can put Windows Mail on your new Windows 7 computer. It’s there already, it’s just missing 1 file that makes it work and if you still have the old computer you can easily grab it from there and put it on the new one. Instructions are at sevenforums. Just do a search.

I am trying to respond to “Another outlook/android synching question” under Fred’s article. I can’t make head or tail out of what Google has on its website after reading the warning in the newsletter :confused: about Google sync going away on Jan. 30. I have one question: will I be able to sync my google calendar with my iphone’s calendar after that date, if I buy a new iphone this summer? If there is an answer it was clear as MUD. So if anyone else read that and understands it enough to answer my question, would you?? My google calendar is now synching with my apple calendar on my current iphone. I want to know if I can make it sync if I buy a new iphone.

Obviously this does not seem like a question for this Windows Secrets site, but, it was in the newsletter and therefore I feel like yes, I can ask it here.

The other change between Win 7 and Win 8, the Win 7 Retail version (Whether Upgrade media or Full Install media) contained both 32 Bit and 64 Bit disks. The OEM versions contained one or the other bitness disks

In Win 8 you choose which bitness you want, 32 Bit or 64 Bit when buying a Retail Package, whether it is an Upgrade version or a Full Install, OEM version.

The other place one might want the Full Install, OEM version is where you wish to keep the qualifying OS (whether it be XP, Vista or Win 7) and dual boot Win 8 or use Win 8 in a VM. To keep and use both OS’s requires the Full Install, OEM version.

ARRRGH!!!! Who can keep track of all this? Wait, where’s my Smart Robot. I’ll make him do it. This is *absurd*!!!!!

So what are the chances of Joe Average going home with the right version for his needs – Woody says the clerks are clueless, so no help for him there. It’ll be a giant roll of the dice.