Dave-H

I do hope so, great job Microsoft! On top of that, Office 2010 is bricked again as well!

I've had to do that quite a few times before with updates, but only on my netbook, not on my main machine. They appear to install, but don't as they can't replace some files, and are then offered again. Thanks for the heads-up!

Thanks, actually https://www.ultrasounds.com does work for me in IE8! I have ProxHTTPSProxy running, but even without it, it still works if I dismiss the security warning message. With HTTPSProxy running, I do still have to dismiss the "mixed content" warning.

Thanks, we'll have to now wait and see what @jumpercomes up with.

Ah, so the e-mail I forwarded came through the second time without being corrupted by the addition of my signature? That's good to know! As a matter of interest @heinoganda, did you get a page with just the header in IE8, or indeed in any other browser, when you opened the source file I posted? It didn't display in Firefox 52 ESR for me either, which really puzzled me!

Oh right, I thought it had always worked for me, at least in Firefox. I've just checked and it's all working fine in Firefox 52.9.0 ESR with Flash version 32.0.0.114, and I'm pretty sure it did on all previous versions too. IE8 on the other hand has always had a problem in recent times displaying the version and the Flash animation itself on my system. I just see white spaces where they should be, not even empty boxes! Flash is working on other test pages in IE though.

It doesn't look as if that update will replace MSO.DLL again, so I suspect it will make no difference to the problem I'm afraid. I do hope I'm proved wrong!

@heinoganda Did the second attempt at forwarding the e-mail work?

Fixed what?

@dencorso I sent you a PM regarding this!

Oh dear! OK I've just forwarded it again from my phone with my signature turned off this time. I don't know if that will make the difference. I also didn't alter the subject line this time either (I added "(Test 3)" to it last time). I hope it gets to you unaltered this time! Cheers, Dave.

Just forwarded the blank e-mail to you @heinoganda. From my phone so Eudora won't corrupt it in any way.

Another strange one this evening. I received another e-mail from Sky, a marketing message, not from the forum, and although it opens immediately in Eudora, the body is completely blank, only the header is displayed! It also does this if opened in IE8 or Firefox! It displays fine in the e-mail app on my Android phone. Another one to analyse! BlankSkyEmail.htm

You need to find KB4462157 and KB4461614 in Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel and uninstall them. They can take some finding as the updates are not listed in order, but they should be somewhere in the list under Microsoft Office 2010. Office should work fine again then. Switch off automatic updating if you have it on or it will automatically install them again. Go to Microsoft Update and do a custom scan for updates. When and if it finds those two updates, hide them. HTH.

They both open fine in Eudora, with no delay.

A couple more example e-mails, this time both from Sky! In this case, one of them opens immediately, the other doesn't. It seems to be only the ones from the Sky support forum which have the problem, other messages from Sky seem to be OK. As before, the non-working one opens in IE8 and displays, but there is then a frozen pause (about the same duration as on Eudora) and then the ActiveX warning banner pops up at the top. The other one displays without this. The working one does reference a .woff file in its source code, but not in the same way or to the same extent as the non-working one. I have tried un-ticking "use separate settings from Internet Explorer" in Eudora's options, and this allows me to use the Accessibility options in Internet Settings to ignore colours, fonts, and styles when displaying pages. This does what it says, and messages in Eudora then display using the default Times New Roman font as expected. It makes no difference to the delay in them displaying though. WorkingSkyEmailSource.htm NonWorkingSkyEmailSource.htm

So if Sky are now using a font for their forum notification messages which isn't supported by IE in Windows XP, presumably it's causing a long delay but eventually it falls back to something else and the message then displays?

So it looks like it didn't even make any attempt to install, which is very strange. If it was an incompatible update I would still expect it to pop up a message telling you that.

This is all starting to sound very complicated and difficult. However, as an exercise it will be fascinating to try! I'm afraid it's all getting a bit over my head though. Is this off-topic for this thread? As the thread was started about making old legacy e-mail clients (like Eudora) work with modern messages, I think it's probably OK. I'm happy to start a new thread specifically for this problem if necessary. Den?

Is there a KB3001652.log file in the Windows folder?

Windows updates are normally logged in the Windows System Event Log. Is there anything recorded there?

Yes indeed, I forgot about that. You said it was a sledgehammer to crack a nut! I actually do have Proxomitron already installed, I cannot for the life of me remember why, but I've had it on the system for years! It's version "Naoko 4.5 (2003-6-1)" which I guess must be pretty out of date now. I can't remember how to use it either, but I'll give it a go if it might help!

Looks like that was a very problematic update when it was rolled out four years ago! One example here. Are you sure it's compatible with XP? At the very end of that thread someone refers to a fix that actually relates to .NET 4.5, which doesn't work on XP of course.

Well that's good news anyway! Thanks again for all your detective work, a shame that there seems to be no answer or workaround for the problem. Cheers, Dave.

Thanks @heinogandaas always. If you're correct, (and you always are! ) then there is no solution to this other than to use another e-mail client. Basically, Eudora can no longer cope with some modern e-mail messages, which is a PITA, but I suppose was inevitable with a program that hasn't been updated since 2006! I'll stick with it for the moment, there are only two regular sources of messages that I receive from which cause the problem, but if it starts affecting more and more messages I will eventually have to review things. The vast majority do still display fine and immediately at the moment. You can actually tell the Sky forum to send plain text instead of HTML, so that is one workaround, although the messages then look awful! I can still just switch to Eudora's own viewer as well, where they still don't look good, but not as bad as sending plain text at source! It still seems strange to me that Eudora can display the messages immediately with its own internal viewer, but can't using the embedded IE viewer option, and the fault seems to be in Eudora itself, and not in IE! Thanks everyone else of course for your input into this, especially @Mathwiz. If anyone else has any brainwaves as to how to work around this I would love to hear them! Cheers, Dave.