I use Norton AntiSpam with Outlook Express 6 on Win XP SP3. When I've selected messages and clicked on This is Spam, each time AntiSpam processes a message, it makes my mouse cursor jump almost half way across the screen to the left to an empty area on the desktop. This is very annoying. Why does it do this?
I use Norton AntiSpam with Outlook Express 6 on Win XP SP3. When I've selected messages and clicked on This is Spam, each time AntiSpam processes a message, it makes my mouse cursor jump almost half way across the screen to the left to an empty area on the desktop. This is very annoying. Why does it do this?
Doing this in the foreground is just plain poor software design. There is no reason whatsoever that the software cannot handle these tasks without taking complete control of your computer. There is no way for a message that is being inspected to "start trouble." If user interaction could be a problem, then only those actions that could interfere should be blocked. There is absolutely no reason why the program could not be written to allow the user to do anything they want with other messages (not the ones selected and designated as This is Spam) instead of preventing all actions while it slowly does whatever it has to do. This is just a matter of lazy coding or poor software architecting.
As I posted in my reply to your other message on your spam problems, I have used OE6 and XP Pro for years and never experienced any delays or other effects after marking as spam, or unmarking. That's with a 1.8GHz single core CPU and 2 GB of RAM and a very large email message base.
I'm not saying it is not happening to you but it is certainly not typical in my experience here.
Ok, it's not typical. I stil see no reason for it to display a dialog box and operate in the foreground, no matter how long it takes or doesn't take. It's bad programming. It shouldn't block acccess to Outlook Express while it's working for even a nanosecond. There's simply no reason for it to work that way.
mbrazil wrote:Ok, it's not typical. I stil see no reason for it to display a dialog box and operate in the foreground, no matter how long it takes or doesn't take. It's bad programming. It shouldn't block acccess to Outlook Express while it's working for even a nanosecond. There's simply no reason for it to work that way.
I don't remember the dialog box you mention -- you don't have a screenshot you could post do you?
I'd really really like to know what the version ID is of your Norton product ......
OK -- so I've just rebooted into XP which I've not been in for a month; ignored updating windows and NIS and opened up Outlook Express to the old message base that I've copied over to WIN 7 using WET.
I don't want to download any new messages so I opend up the Norton AntiSpam folder, highlighted a message and clicked on the Norton AntiSpam button. it gave me a choice including Mark as Not Spam so I selected that.
That did pop up a popup asking me if I wanted to send the message to Norton for verification so I selected No and Always use this choice and the popup went away; then it asked if I wanted to block the sender and since I rarely do I said No and don't ask me again and then it moved the message to the Inbox.
I then selected another message and clicked on the toolbar button, selected This is Not Spam and in a literal blink of the eye it was done and ready for the next.
I then repeated that on a block of messages and again it was almost instantaneous with no time to stop me from doing anything else and no interruptions whatsoever between telling it to change the state of the Spam and it being over.
So while the popups are a nuisance they can be stopped and I see absolutely no delays in processing the change of state. Are they what you refered to as a dialog box? Or was it something else?
It's 18.5.0.125, but with Live Update, how could it be anything but the latest version available?
Here's the screenshot. It was damned difficult to get because Norton AntiSpam kept dragging my cursor all over the screen every time it went from one message to another. I hate having to fight with a program just to be able to do something that should be simple like grabbing a screen shot.
<< It's 18.5.0.125, but with Live Update, how could it be anything but the latest version available? >>
Quite easily, as I already said, because Live Update does not install major upgrades eg from 16. to 17. to 18.
I'll see the image tomorrow after it's gone through the normal lmoderation procedure. Thanks for catching it.
I use Irfanview's Capture mode for screenshots. It doesn't require you to use the cursor -- just CTRL + F11 will capture the part of the monitor you want.
No, it's not the popups I'm referring to. It's the Processing dialog with the progress bar. You probably won't see it for more than a second or so if you select only one message, but when you've selected a half dozen or more spam messages that appear in your inbox, it's there for quite awhile, and it doesn't allow you to do anything else until it's done processing the spam you identified.
For some odd reason it also keeps taking control of the mouse cursor as it processes each message and jumping it entirely off the Outlook Express window and over to an empty spot on the desktop. I do have my mouse software set to jump the cursor to the default button in dialog boxes, but there's no dialog box where it's jumping to, not even a quick flash of one. Why would NIS put up a dialog box way off the left anyway? I have a large monitor, and it takes my mouse cursor around 800 pixels to the left. If I bring it back to try to do something, even in another program window altogether, it just grabs it again when it finishes processing one spam message and starts on the next.
It sounds to me to be a driver conflict between possibly the anti-spam and the mouse software, or some other driver triggered by the anti-spam function. It is obviously systemic, as we don't have a multitude of other users suffering the same problem. What mouse and keyboard software are you running? Wired or wireless? Logitech?
I am also running an XP3/Win 7 dual boot. My system was built for XP and is compatible with Win 7. You system appears to be advanced to the degree that it is perfectly compatible with Win 7 but may not be entirely so for XP and its accompanying obsolete programs.
Sorry not to get back sooner.
I don't think I've ever seen a progress bar like that with SPAM -- I certainly don't now with NIS in WIndows 7 or in XP with reclassifying existing mail.
Perhaps someone else can comment on it and also whether there is any option not to show progress bars - I thought here was. I don't suppose the Ignore setting does that? (Question for someone who knows! <s> )