Problem With Outlook And Bdas Toolbar

I suppose this is the regular Outlook message when detected an addin that did not responded in time to shutdown - next time when Outlook starts it warns the user to disable the supposedly offending addin.

Please confirm if this is the case, and I would like to know more about this issue:

- operating system version and Outlook version (2003, 2007, if is 32 bit or 64 bit Outlook 2010)

- what operations were you performing, if any, when you closed Outlook (this triggers the behavior you reported).

The Outlook shutdown is a wide issue - and behavior changed from version to version - for example if you performed a computer shutdown while Outlook was opened and performing something, Outlook (from 2007 SP2) does not wait for addin to shutdown and closes forcedly the addin. This marks inside Outlook private status data that the addin does not cleanly shutdown (from OL point of view) and this is why the messsage appears. Again, this is a wide story, ranging from benign behaviors (i.e. an addin could not have been crashed but simply failing to respond to shutdown in time and/or way Outlook expects it) to real crashes.

This is why I am asking you to make and effort - if you have the time and you are willing to help us understand - to send us those informations. Be as verbose as you think is needed, even if you don't consider an information important since this means more info for us to understand what happened.

Regards,

Cristian Amarie

Bitdefender

I couldn't edit my previous post so I'll just do this. I also keep getting this pop up with Outlook that says "Contacting server for information" with a green progress bar running through the bottom. Probably related to this whole mess.

Then I suppose is a false alarm from Outlook which did not receive a shutdown notification in time from our addin.

Especially if your email account is configured to use Exchange server this is not something I didn't saw before, so to speak (unrelated to BD addin).

As the dialog seen, there are two choices:

- press "No" and see if the warning reappears (and continue to use normally)

- press "Yes" to disable the BD toolbar if this happens every time (or enough to become a nuisance).

If the latter case, please reply me so to know how to continue.

Regards,

Cristian

I've dealt with this both ways, disabling and ignoring and it doesn't fix either way. It asks you to see if after you disable to see if there is an update available. What update? Where? I don't have a clue as to what update they are talking about. I'm not running an Exchange either. I'm running Outlook with the Hotmail Connector. The way the BitDefender configures with Outlook 2007 is strange compared to, let's say Kaspersky. When you configure Kaspersky anti-spam with Outlook there are settings inside Outlook that let you configure it through the Outlook program instead of just turning it on and letting it configure itself. You do it through the Rules and Alerts but when I looked for the same thing with BD I couldn't find anything.

The pop-up I get constantly that has the progress bar with it and has "contacting server for information" is almost a bigger pest. I have a feeling that both of these issues are related to the issues with the BDAS toolbar. I don't have it disabled right now because then you get the issue with BitDefender about fixing it so I just turned it off in Outlook until there's some kind of a fix. Are other people having issues with this?

The message for update is a generic message from Outlook. It is suggesting the user that the addin might have had a problem which may have been fixed in an update. It does not offer a specific information, just a generic hint.

So you have Outlook 2007 with Hotmail connector. I'll ask a test engineer to do some testing with this configuration - I won't rule out that can be simply a bug on our side so I want him/her to do a preliminary check.

The way the BitDefender configures with Outlook 2007 is strange compared to, let's say Kaspersky. When you configure Kaspersky anti-spam with Outlook there are settings inside Outlook that let you configure it through the Outlook program instead of just turning it on and letting it configure itself. You do it through the Rules and Alerts but when I looked for the same thing with BD I couldn't find anything.

I don't know how Kaspersky configuration is, but I suppose is available in Outlook add-in options and the scanning is done inside Outlook.

The BD settings is simpler, since the messages are already scanned by the email engines' scanners before arrives in Outlook, and Outlook receives messages already clasified. What user can do is to manual override this using Is Spam/Is Friend buttons. Also there is a Settings buttons as well inside BDAS toolbar.

The pop-up I get constantly that has the progress bar with it and has "contacting server for information" is almost a bigger pest. I have a feeling that both of these issues are related to the issues with the BDAS toolbar. I don't have it disabled right now because then you get the issue with BitDefender about fixing it so I just turned it off in Outlook until there's some kind of a fix. Are other people having issues with this?

As I said, let me escalate this to testing to check if we can reproduce based on these informations. But the message "contacting server for information" is from Outlook, not from BDAS toolbar. I won't rule that BDAS *might* have a side effect either - I can't think on one right now, but the BD system is complicated enough to don't pronounce myself without checking anything.

I'll get back to you - either me or directly a colleague - as soon as we have results.

Regards,

Cristian

The contact server for information is from Outlook. I was aware of that. I must've used all the search engines trying to find answers for that and all most of them do is either ramble on in "tech speak" or go around in circles until you are more confused. What I did was a repair install on BD to see if that would help. Once I took the toolbar out of Outlook I was unable to put it back in w/o some form of install so I chose a repair and so far so good. What exactly do you do when you see your junk file in Outlook? I should say "Junk Inbox". Let's say you have 10 junk emails in that file. Do you do anything with those as far as the toolbars go or do you just click delete. I was under the impression that MS Outlook 2007 junk file is basically trained to do the same thing as the BDAS toolbar. It supposedly has it's own screening system to find junk emails. How do you use the BDAS toolbar if Outlook has already put everything that's junk in the junk file inbox? Do they want you to open the junk file inbox and put all the junk emails in the "Spammers" file or "Is Spam". Kind of like training for BDAS. I'm a little confused as to how to get BD to recognize junk files when MS Outlook does a pretty good job of it right from the start? I hope I'm not confusing you too much Christian.