Dave-H

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 It's version "Naoko 4.5 (2003-6-1)" which I guess must be pretty out of date now.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.

Probably not related, but just thought I'd mention that I suddenly started having terrible javascript problems on FF 52.9 ESR just on Facebook, and it turned out that it was Adblock Plus causing it. I disabled it on Facebook, and everything came good. I reported it to Adblock Plus, and got a reply that they had other reports of this and were working on it. As I say, probably irrelevant, but the symptoms were pretty much as the OP described, but for me it appeared only to happen on Facebook.

Wow, amazing detective work there! It may well be that these (and some other) e-mails will never now display quickly in Eudora, but when they do eventually display they look perfect, there's no elements missing or mis-formatting, it's just the delay that's the problem. From what you say it looks as if something is stalling on its loading until it eventually times out and the message then displays, but it is presumably falling back on something else as the message does display correctly.

Thank you so much for looking at this @Mathwiz, I'm sure we will identify what's causing the problem. I hadn't looked at the end of the files so I didn't notice the fonts thing. At least I know now how to fix any messages that I want to keep so they don't take ages to load, but I'd still like to know what's causing the problem in the first place! Did you try loading the files in IE8? If so, did you get the ActiveX warning with the unedited one? Cheers, Dave.

Also KB4461614. KB3115314 was replaced anyway I think. KB4462157 and KB4461614 are the only two I have now kept uninstalled and hidden. All the others seem to be OK.

Yes, I got those three. All installed OK, but whether they are doing what they should without the latest MSO.DLL installed I don't know. I'm still hoping the XP non-compatibility problem will be addressed on Patch Tuesday next week, but I'm not holding my breath!

Well FWIW I think I've now definitely confirmed the logo or something related to it as being the source of the problem. One thing which Eudora can do, which I think is quite unique, is that it allows you to edit received messages and re-save them. I opened one of the problem messages, enabled the editing function, and cut the logo image to the clipboard. I then re-saved it, and without closing it, enabled editing again and pasted the logo back in the same place. After re-saving it, it now looks exactly the same as it did before, but opens instantly, apart for a very slight delay in the logo appearing! Well I say it looks the same, but the weight of the text font seems to have changed slightly between the original and the new version. Comparing the source code on the old and new versions, it does seem quite different, so removing the logo must have removed some other code, which putting it back hasn't replaced. I've attached the two versions to see if anyone can work out what the critical difference is that's causing one to delay opening and the other not. Opening the files in IE8, the edited version opens immediately with no problem, the original opens but then displays the ActiveX security warning bar at the top. It still looks fine though, and still looks the same if I dismiss the warning bar and allow ActiveX to run. The text still looks slightly different between the two versions even in IE8. Very strange! EditedSource.htm OriginalSource.htm

Yes, that does make perfect sense. I guess whatever Eudora is trying to connect to and failing, its actually not helpforum.sky.com! When I looked into this with @heinogandaoriginally last year, I think we thought that the source of the display delay problem was actually just the header logo which is on all of the messages. It was trying to access that which was causing the delay, so I guess I'll have to try and find exactly where that's being server from. The same applied to the e-mails from Marks and Spencer.

So this line was the only apparent problem? [19:22] 000 "EOF occurred in violation of protocol (_ssl.c:600)" while trying to establish local SSL tunnel for [helpforum.sky.com:443] That has now gone away, but has made no difference to the e-mail display problem. In fact, the problem doesn't change whether HTTPSProxy is in use or not, or however it's configured when it is in use, so I guess whatever's causing it is something not related to it. Maybe the error shown above is still happening, but HTTPSProxy just isn't recording it any more as it's now bypassed for that domain. In the error message above, what does "EOF" actually mean?

I think I tried that before, but I've now tried again and the first four lines in the console quoted in my last post no longer appear. Sadly it makes no difference to how long it takes the e-mails to appear, there's no change at all! All I see in the console now is - [20:01] 004 ProxHTTPSProxyMII FrontProxy/v1.5 [WinError 10053] An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine This is logged at the moment that the e-mail message finally displays, if that's any clue! There are two sources from where the e-mails always display really slowly in Eudora, the Sky support forum, and marksandspencer.com. I occasionally get a display delay from other message sources, but these two are the worst.

@i430VX @dencorso Sorry I've taken a while following this up, but I just tried installing Google Chrome Frame. I forced it to become the default rendering engine in IE8 with a registry hack, and was astounded how it transformed IE8 in that it would now correctly display web pages that looked a terrible mess with the default Trident engine! Unfortunately, it didn't make any difference at all to Eudora's rendering of e-mails, the problem ones are still just as slow to display. As I said earlier, when they eventually do display they display perfectly, with no elements missing, so that's not the problem, the problem is how long it takes them to appear! Google Chrome Frame also stops Windows/Microsoft Update from displaying in IE8 of course, as you would expect! @heinoganda, if you're across this thread, what I'm seeing always in the HTTPSProxy console every time there's a display delay, in this case with an e-mail from the Sky help forum, is this - [19:22] 000 "EOF occurred in violation of protocol (_ssl.c:600)" while trying to establish local SSL tunnel for [helpforum.sky.com:443] [19:22] 002 [D] "GET https://helpforum.sky.com/html/assets/email/community-logo.png" 200 9887 [19:22] 001 [D] "GET https://helpforum.sky.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif" 200 414 [19:22] 003 [D] "OPTIONS https://helpforum.sky.com/ 0" 200 - [19:22] 003 ProxHTTPSProxyMII FrontProxy/v1.5 [WinError 10053] An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine I don't know if this gives any clues!

Well I finally forced the update yesterday using the update assistant. I guess I'll now never know why I wasn't being offered the update by Windows Update, let's now see if the next one is offered, whenever that's due! All went fine, no apparent problems other than the usual blizzard of error and warning messages in the Windows logs now on every boot. Now time for the usual fun research on how to get rid of as many of them as possible that you seem to have to do after every update!

LOL!

Yes, that's exactly what I used to get, but suddenly a few weeks ago I just started getting a blank white page when I logged off, with a horizontal page boundary line on it if I scroll, but no content. If I refresh it, it goes back to the logon page. Very strange!

Working great!

Off topic, but I use Lloyds online banking with Firefox 52.9.0 ESR, and I've noticed recently that when I log off I just get a blank white page. Adblock Plus is disabled. Have you noticed that?