Problem with Eudora and Win7

[consu...@makaw.net]

I am very new here and to Win7 (many years with XP). I have successfully installed Eudora 7.1.0.9 on my new Win7 laptop. It now takes a very long time to connect to my email server. I KNOW this has been discussed before, but the solutions suggested either don't work (run in compatibility mode), or no longer seem to exist
(going to http://eudorabb.qualcomm.com/showthread.php?t=14440&page=2, as has been posted several times) and downloading a file.

Is there a new location for that file?

Is there another solution? I am running Win7 64 bit Home Premium. I really do not want to give up on Eudora as my email client, I have been using it for nearly 15 years in various iterations. I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with changes, and don't need yet another!

Thanks for any help given!

[John H Meyers]

On 8/8/2013 3:07 PM

> I am very new here and to Win7 (many years with XP).
> I have successfully installed Eudora 7.1.0.9 on my new Win7 laptop.
> It now takes a very long time to connect to my email server.

Do you mean that there is a long wait to connect to the first server
using SSL (or TLS), which may even cause a time-out at the server end,
but that subsequent repeated connection attempts,
so long as Eudora is not re-launched, then proceed without delay?

Those would be the very specific indications of a problem in Windows
(yes, folks, this is another Windows-caused problem)
which takes Windows an extremely long time
to simply return the memory address of a new "scratchpad" area
(a/k/a "heap"), which the "OpenSSL" library version within Eudora
uses to collect some "random data" (a/k/a "entropy")
for initializing SSL, which would not really securely encrypt anything
if it did not select a full 128 independent "random bits"
when creating an encryption key for each session.

The then current OpenSSL version called upon Windows 80 times
to simply provide the address of the next "heap," whereas
by the time Windows 7 appeared, Windows took nearly
an entire second of time to do that, even once,
so obviously it will then take way north of an entire minute
to get Windows to do it again, up to 80 times.

The value 80 is in a single byte of Eudora program file QCSSL.dll,
and by changing that single byte's value to 1 instead of 80,
that time is condensed into about one second instead.

There was naturally some concern about whether this would
adversely affect security at the same time, but the conclusion
of a lot of study by various people, including at openssl.org,
is that so much other "entropy gathering" is performed
to initialize the OpenSSL library that all the scanning of
multiple "heaps" was unnecessary "overkill" -- even Bruce Schneier,
a Eudora user as well as a well known author in the field of Cryptography,
asked another Eudora forum about this same problem, and eventually
declared that it was probably all his fault, for so strongly emphasizing
the "original shuffling of the cards" before dealing hands
that OpenSSL went somewhat overboard there, which wouldn't
have been a problem if Windows itself hadn't made it so much worse
by taking so long just to find the next "memory heap" ;-)

Finding the single byte to change, within an entire program file,
was accomplished by a brilliant anonymous Eudora forum contributor
known only as "JCF," who matched the "open source" programs
from OpenSSL.org to the compiled program file which comes with Eudora,
and found the exact location of that one byte needing change.

> I KNOW this has been discussed before, but the solutions suggested
> either don't work (run in compatibility mode), or no longer seem to exist

> [downloading a copy of Eudora program file QCSSL.DLL
> which has a single byte changed from the original file]

>
> Is there a new location for that file?

Do NOT run Eudora in "compatibilty mode" -- it does not help,
and some reports indicate that this could cause other problems.

"Patched" program file QCSSL.dll remained downloadable
from Eudora forums via a direct URL for some while
after the Eudora forums lost all page formatting,
but even that direct URL to the original "attachment"
(to a forum post) seemed to stop working after a while.

You can, however, get yourself a "hex editor" for binary files,
then change the single byte yourself.

You can get a good, free hex editor from:
<http://www.softcircuits.com/cygnus/fe/>

The size of program file QCSSL.dll for Eudora version 7.1.0.9
should be exactly 507904 bytes (7C000 in hexadecimal).

Make a COPY of that file, and perform the following on the copy:

Using your hex editor, verify that starting at hex location 283F3
you find these consecutive (hex) byte values: BB 50 00 00 00

Change the byte whose value was 50 to 01,
without changing the file length (i.e. you want to
overwrite that single byte value, rather than insert a byte),
so that location 283F3 ends up containing BB 01 00 00 00,
then you can save the changed new file.

As a final confirmation of correct patching,
you may open a command window (cmd.exe)
and use a built-in Windows file compare command:

fc/b QCSSL.dll.original QCSSL.dll.patched

The correct complete output of that command should be:

Comparing files QCSSL.dll.original and QCSSL.dll.patched
000283F4: 50 01

If this was successful, rename the files so that your patched file
ends up being the new QCSSL.dll, then enjoy faster Eudora launches.

And keep this in mind:

"There is more to life than simply increasing its speed" [M. K. Gandhi]

--

[consu...@makaw.net]

On Thursday, August 8, 2013 1:07:17 PM UTC-7, consu...@makaw.net wrote:
> I am very new here and to Win7 (many years with XP). I have successfully installed Eudora 7.1.0.9 on my new Win7 laptop. It now takes a very long time to connect to my email server. I KNOW this has been discussed before, but the solutions suggested either don't work (run in compatibility mode), or no longer seem to exist
>
> (going to http://eudorabb.qualcomm.com/showthread.php?t=14440&page=2, as has been posted several times) and downloading a file.
>
>
>
> Is there a new location for that file?

I don't have a hex editor and wouldn't know how to use one if I had. Does ANYONE out there have a copy of the patch file QCSSLv71.zip they could send me?

[consu...@makaw.net]

Sorry, didn't mean for that to sound as churlish as it sounded. It's been a long week....

[consu...@makaw.net]

"
And keep this in mind:

"There is more to life than simply increasing its speed" [M. K. Gandhi] "

Well, Gandhiji is right. I will use the 5 to 10 min Eudora takes to connect now and reflect on calm and peaceful thoughts... retirement, travel, friends.....

Thank you for taking the time to write up such a thorough explanation of what was going on and a solution to it.

[Tom Hall]

I just installed Eudora 7.1.0.9 on my Win7 64bit Home Premium system, and
it works just fine - not slow at all.


Tom

--
remove .invalid to reply by email

[Tom Hall]

On Sat, 17 Aug 2013 13:27:24 -0400, Dennis Lee Bieber
<wlf...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 16 Aug 2013 17:39:39 -0600, Tom Hall <aria...@gmail.com.invalid>
>declaimed the following:

>
>>
>>I just installed Eudora 7.1.0.9 on my Win7 64bit Home Premium system, and
>>it works just fine - not slow at all.
>>

> Do you have an account that requires the top-level security?

I'm not sure what you mean by "top-level". My account is a member of the
administrator group.

> The complaint has always been the first time initialization of the
>encryption entropy. Starting Eudora, reading mail, shutting down, starting
>up again later, etc. will encounter the delay for entropy if used.

I'm not seeing that here.

[T. Keating]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2013 13:07:17 -0700 (PDT), consu...@makaw.net wrote:

I've noticed a number of ISP's have implemented a trottling mechanism on the default SMTP
(25) ad POP(110) ports. Throttling/timeout usually kicks in when you try to
download/uploads more than a couple of emails at a time.

I suggest switching over to a secure port with SSL(TLS) to query your email system.
http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/kb/2307hq.html

Second if your new laptop is a multi-core cpu.. (more than 2 cores are likely)..
I recommend locking down Eudora to a single core (other than core 0).

Older programs often failed to implement the necessary locks/semaphores necessary for
operating in multi-core environment..

I use a simple utitily to set the executable to set the affinity mask..
http://www2.robpol86.com/guides/ImageCFG/

[Jim Thompson]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 18:43:44 -0400, T. Keating <tkus...@ktcnslt.com>
wrote:

Good lead, THANKS!

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

[John H Meyers]

On 8/25/2013 5:43 PM, T. Keating wrote:

> I've noticed a number of ISP's have implemented a throttling mechanism on the default SMTP

> (25) ad POP(110) ports. Throttling/timeout usually kicks in when you try to
> download/uploads more than a couple of emails at a time.

What makes you think so?
Exactly what observations on your part?

I would think that any slowdown after only a few messages
is due to some other hardware or software cause than you suspect,
which could even include anti-malware software in your computer,
if you haven't disabled essentially redundant "email scanning."

There is absolutely no reason for any ISP to do any less "throttling"
of mail traveling over an encrypted (SSL/TLS) connection
than on any non-encrypted connection, so they don't do anything
of the kind, but many an ISP completely _blocks_ outgoing port 25,
because all domains on the Internet must accept incoming mail
on that port, without authentication (passwords),
hence that port (25) is the most abused by spammers,
whose actions end up reflecting upon the ISP itself,
as to email from its customers being regarded as suspicious,
so the easy way out for an ISP is to just block port 25.

Most ISPs also impose sending quotas of various sorts,
often by total number of recipients (including Bcc)
per message, per hour, per day, etc., and these limits
are usually advertised on some "support" web page of the ISP.

Business customers of particular ISPs can often arrange
exemptions from some of the above, either by the type of account
they pay for or by negotiation with the right people.

It's also becoming ever more popular for ISPs to now _require_
the use of SSL/TLS for all connections, but not every ISP
lets you pick your own choice of whether to use "alternate port SSL"
vs. "standard port Start TLS," so you have to adjust yourself
(and Eudora) to how your ISP actually configures its servers.

Luckily, there are normally only two Eudora settings combinations
which you might need to try, if you have no other server info
than the correct server's name to begin with -- if you don't even
know the correct server's name for sure, then you'd better
go find out from the ISP, some of whom have been changing
to new server names, simultaneously with imposing
new requirements to use only TLS/SSL connections.

Meanwhile, the actual "huge slowdown" issue of the earlier part
of this thread is about something utterly different,
which is that Eudora v7 uses the open source "OpenSSL" library
for SSL/TLS, and the OpenSSL library wants to "initialize the random
key generator" at least once before making the first SSL/TLS
connection since any given launch of Eudora,
and it's the unexpectedly huge time that a certain
Microsoft Windows function takes when called by OpenSSL
which leads to the well known pattern in which Eudora's
first use of SSL can stall for well over a minute,
unless a one-byte "patch" is made to Eudora program file QCSSL.dll

> Second if your new laptop is a multi-core cpu.. (more than 2 cores are likely)..
> I recommend locking down Eudora to a single core (other than core 0).
>
> Older programs often failed to implement the necessary locks/semaphores
> necessary for operating in multi-core environment..

In that case, hundreds of thousands of Windows programs written either
before any such CPUs were produced, or without any programming to
specifically try to take advantage of them, should be failing,
so are they, or does a bug-free OS take care of running them properly?
(e.g. it's mighty hard to get my [dual] CPU to exceed "50% use,"
even when a program is stuck in a loop, although it may be
dividing that 50% in random fashion between the CPUs).

If you are trying to say that Eudora's multi-tasking might be buggy,
is there any evidence for that? Is there any new "compatibility mode"
in Windows to make sure that all programs run as intended?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_processor>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computer_science)>

"unless I set the affinity of tribes2.exe to one CPU instead of both,
my _dual_ Pentium III Windows _XP_ computer would blue screen (it turned out
_a faulty VP6 motherboard and dissimilar CPUs_ were to blame)"
<http://www2.robpol86.com/guides/ImageCFG/>
"the only reason I use it is to fix old _games_ (UT99 for example)
which have problems on multicore/multicpu systems. It does so
by assigning an executable to specific logical CPUs permanently
(by _modifying the .exe file_ so back up the original
in case you want to restore it)."

Eudora, in total, comprises its launched .exe, a number of DLLs,
plugins, etc., possibly from diverse sources,
so just how does Eudora fit into this plan,
if indeed there is any way (or need) at all?

--

[John H Meyers]

On 8/29/2013 7:38 AM, John H Meyers wrote:

> Eudora, in total, comprises its launched .exe, a number of DLLs,
> plugins, etc., possibly from diverse sources,

and also calls upon various Windows components to carry out functions,

> so just how does Eudora fit into this plan

[for self-contained games in a single .exe],

[T. Keating]

On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 07:38:33 -0500, John H Meyers <jhme...@nomail.invalid> wrote:

>On 8/25/2013 5:43 PM, T. Keating wrote:
>
>> I've noticed a number of ISP's have implemented a throttling mechanism on the default SMTP
>> (25) ad POP(110) ports. Throttling/timeout usually kicks in when you try to
>> download/uploads more than a couple of emails at a time.
>
>What makes you think so?
>Exactly what observations on your part?

Incomplete/hanging email downloads at a client who uses Eudora as their primary email
program. I solved the problem by switching all their copies of Eudora to using encrypted
port # & ssl/tls. (I.E. In the morning Eudora would download first couple of emails and
then the port would timeout.)

It could of been either some sort of filtering by At&r business, their 3rd party
email/web hosting service or some sort of blow back from a DDOS.

>
>I would think that any slowdown after only a few messages
>is due to some other hardware or software cause than you suspect,
>which could even include anti-malware software in your computer,
>if you haven't disabled essentially redundant "email scanning."
>
>There is absolutely no reason for any ISP to do any less "throttling"
>of mail traveling over an encrypted (SSL/TLS) connection
>than on any non-encrypted connection, so they don't do anything
>of the kind, but many an ISP completely _blocks_ outgoing port 25,

This occured on a business class aDSL service. (no blocking, except for a firewall were I
config'd the rules. )

Problem observed between Act/Eudora when fired up on a Xp pro system with more than 2
cores.. Hangs/errors.. (Disabling 4 out 6 cores fixed the problem, so did locking down
the Eudora and Act each using a different core.)

Noted a similar problem with my old Pegasus email program on my new quad core laptop(win
7) (very slow.. ) Speed improved considerably when I locked down Pegasus to a single core.

>"unless I set the affinity of tribes2.exe to one CPU instead of both,
>my _dual_ Pentium III Windows _XP_ computer would blue screen (it turned out
>_a faulty VP6 motherboard and dissimilar CPUs_ were to blame)"
><http://www2.robpol86.com/guides/ImageCFG/>
>"the only reason I use it is to fix old _games_ (UT99 for example)
>which have problems on multicore/multicpu systems. It does so
>by assigning an executable to specific logical CPUs permanently
>(by _modifying the .exe file_ so back up the original
>in case you want to restore it)."
>
>Eudora, in total, comprises its launched .exe, a number of DLLs,
>plugins, etc., possibly from diverse sources,
>so just how does Eudora fit into this plan,
>if indeed there is any way (or need) at all?

That's why it's still being used.. Act/Eudora work fairly well together.. most of the
time.

[skai...@gmail.com]

John Meyers, thanks for your explanation of this problem and for detailing the fix. I was having this problem with Eudora 7.0.1.0 under Windows 7 Pro (32-bit version). The length of the QCSSL.DLL file in this version of Eudora is different but there is only one occurrence of the sequence BB 50 00 00 00 so I changed the 50 to 01 and the problem was solved. Very pleased.

[jgma...@gmail.com]

@John Meyers & @JCF: Thanks for this fix. I have several personalities set up and when Eudora starts up it is usually a long wait for the first mail check to time out. After the patch the initial wait is gone.

[norm...@gmail.com]

On Monday, May 19, 2014 8:16:01 PM UTC-4, jgma...@gmail.com wrote:
> @John Meyers & @JCF: Thanks for this fix. I have several personalities set up and when Eudora starts up it is usually a long wait for the first mail check to time out. After the patch the initial wait is gone.

If this will help anybody, but I've posted an edited copy of my QCSSL.dll file -- retitled QCSSL-Edited.dll -- online at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18062127/QCSSL-Edited.dll . (It's not a big file by today's standards, so I didn't bother ZIPping it.)

My Windows version is W7 Professional, SP1. My original QCSSL.dll file was "last modified" on 10/4/2006, if that matters.

I think the procedure for this fix could be to:
Shut down Eudora
Navigate to the folder where Eudora.exe is (usually Program Files\Qualcomm\Eudora (if it's invisible, change your View settings) and rename your QCSSL.dll file to QCSSL-Original.dll or some such. (This will take Administrator privileges.)
Download my QCSSL-Edited.dll file, to anywhere you can find it.
Rename it to QCSSL.dll and move or copy it to that Eudora program folder (with Admin privileges again).

That should make the same change as editing the 50 to 01 with a text editor.

You could probably do it in a slightly simpler way, but this way is reversible, because you're saving my edited version AND your original version.

If you're nervous that I'm a bad guy and put a virus in the file, or a dummy and got the edit wrong, you can run the cf compare files on the two versions as outlined above, and you should get the same result. (I haven't actually tried it! Please et me know if I'm a dummy!)

[barbararat...@gmail.com]

Even at this much later date, this fix worked. THANK YOU!!!

[Joanna Sheldon]

Thank you, Norm Rubin!! Whew.

[gv...@upbeat.net]

In addition to all of the good info regarding getting Eudora to add/trust SSL certificates, Eudora <-> Gmail was working up until about the end of 2015, when it suddenly stopped and gave "connection failure", "authorization errors" and "connection timed out" errors, depending on various settings.

Tried for days to make it work, with settings that previously worked. Was very frustrated and about to give up when I discovered this:

VERY IMPORTANT LINK:
https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps

Google was basically blocking Eudora because it considers it an "insecure app" -- even though it is using SSL and Google's certificates.

So one has to "turn on access" to make it work.

FYI, Google will also block the mail app on iPhone 6 (!) or below (even though this is model was the most advanced offered as of 2015). Also it blocks windows mobile <8.1 and several other applications such as Thunderbird.

Very sad that google did not put this into any error messages it servers send and that link is buried in the troubleshooting pages.

[gv...@upbeat.net]

p.s. Of course you need to be signed into your gmail account first before that link will work....

[Juergen Kah]

gv...@upbeat.net schrieb:
> Was very frustrated

So why are you using Gmail? Try any other Email-Provider.
You get what you pay for, i.e. don't pay anything and little bit
frustrated ;-) If you will pay for Email-service, mostly you will have
better service at all.

Google cannot stop Eudora from looking for emails, neither for POP nor
for IMAP. You... will only have to deal with (and learn about?) correct
preferences, sometimes, of course, the terms / Phrases are little bit
different.

> add/trust SSL certificates

Eudora is an older software, not knowing about newer methods to look
(automatically) for different kinds of newer certificates. So in case
you want to use Eudora in the future (as I do!) you will have to learn
how to trust newer certificates, and when... you will stay with Google,
you will have to do this procedure more often than other users.

If interested, you should read more about certificates and/or Google
here in the newsgroup, lots of threads but you will learn and understand.

How comes, that you will have no, absolutely no problems with GMX? Only
Google is changing certificates as often as people change underwear ;-)

> the end of 2015, when it suddenly stopped and gave "connection failure",

Connection failure is different from certificate.

> "authorization errors"

then you have entered a wrong passwort and/or used a wrong server and/or
used a wrong personality for a special server. Not each failure has to
do with Google nor with certificates.

> and "connection timed out" errors

please search for "time out error", could be using wrong server, wrong
personality, problems with your internet connection at all? Mostly
nothing do you with Eudora.

Juergen