Skip to content

Anti-Virus Causes PostOffice Emailing Problem

Release Date: 12/29/2017

Q - I have a user who received the following error message when trying to use PostOffice to send order acknowledgement emails:

ERROR: Error in processing. The server response was: See http://pobox.com/~djb/docs/smtplf.html.



If we follow the URL, it shows this has something to do with the LF,CR issue. But this problem only applies to one single workstation.  All other workstations at this user site work fine with PostOffice.  The user may also receive the following errors with PostOffice after a long timeout period:

ERROR: Failure sending mail.

Unable to read data from the transport connection: net_io_connectionclosed.



A - This issue is strange.  We try to first debugged the problem with this user remotely by sending test emails, and that worked correctly.  The PostOffice feature works with all other workstations at this user site.  If this user logs in to other workstations, it also works. So it is not a domain user security issue.  It seems that this is a problem with the workstation itself.  Finally, we disabled the anti-virus software (Avast Business Antivirus) on this workstation, then PostOffice started to work.  Keep in mind that we are not trying to say this particular anti-virus software does not work with Elliott PostOffce.  Why certain features in Elliott are blocked by anti-virus software is a complicated subject.  Most anti-virus software configurations allow for a relaxed security policy, which makes the software work with Elliott.  Unfortunately, we are not anti-virus software experts who can give advice on how to configure the software to work with Elliott.

The bottom line is that if there are weird problems like this, there's a good chance it is related to anti-virus software.  Trying to disable it to see if Elliott works after it is disabled will be the first step in isolating the problem.

As a followup to this issue, the user asked if we could recommend any anti-virus software that will work with Elliott.  Just as an FYI, for the last few years at Netcellent, we have not used any third party anti-virus software.  When no third party anti-virus software is installed, the Windows Defender is enabled automatically.  So for the last few years, Netcellent has been using Windows Defender and it has worked well for us.


EMK

Feedback and Knowledge Base