Overview

The Antispam\FailedMails folder contains duplicate messages, and the AntiSpam Scan service cannot be stopped. This is caused by a second instance of the GFI AntiSpam Scan service.

How to identify

Open a Command prompt and type the following command:

tasklist | findstr gfiscans

Under normal conditions, you should only have one instance. If this issue manifests, you will have two or more, as in the screenshot below:

Note the processID values for the services, as they will be needed in later steps.

Solution

The solution is to terminate the instances, reboot the server and manually update all the antispam engines:

Terminate the instances

Open a Command prompt as Administrator, and type the following command for each of the processIDs noted earlier:

taskkill /PID <processID> /T /F

The <processID> is the value noted in the earlier step. The /T parameter ensures that all child processes are terminated. The /F parameter forcefully closes the process.

Reboot the server

Rebooting the server to ensure that only one instance of the AntiSpam Scan service starts up.

Ensure that updates can go through

If you have experienced any update issues, enable updates through HTTP, as described in the Setting MailEssentials to use HTTP to download updates article. Once completed, make sure that there aren't any firewall rules that prevent access to the update servers:

GFI MailEssentials downloads updates from the following locations over HTTP ports 80 and 443:

meupdate.gfi.com
support.gfi.com
*.mailshell.net
*.rules.mailshell.net
spamrazer.gfi.com
db11.spamcatcher.net
gfi-downloader-137146314.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com
cdnupdate.gfi.com
cdnpatches.gfi.com

Stop the MailEssentials services

The MailEssentials services need to be stopped.

Open the Windows Services Manager by navigating to Start > Run > services.msc and stop the following services:

• Microsoft Exchange Transport service
• GFI List Server
• GFI MailEssentials Attendant
• GFI MailEssentials AS Scan Engine
• GFI MailEssentials Autoupdater
• GFI MailEssentials AV Scan Engine
• GFI MailEssentials Backend
• GFI MailEssentials Legacy Attendant
• GFI POP2Exchange
• GFI MailEssentials Quarantine Action Services

Update the AntiSpam definitions

Since there were multiple instances of the AntiSpan Scan service, there is a chance that the definitions may be corrupted, due to ports being blocked by each instance at a time. To minimize the risk of corruption, we should update the definitions.

Open the GFI MailEssentials Dashboard and navigate to the Updates tab.

Click on the Update all engines button in the Anti Spam Definitions Update section.

Start the MailEssentials services

The MailEssentials services previously stopped, need to be started back up.

Open the Windows Services Manager by navigating to Start > Run > services.msc and start the following services:

• Microsoft Exchange Transport service
• GFI List Server
• GFI MailEssentials Attendant
• GFI MailEssentials AS Scan Engine
• GFI MailEssentials Autoupdater
• GFI MailEssentials AV Scan Engine
• GFI MailEssentials Backend
• GFI MailEssentials Legacy Attendant
• GFI POP2Exchange
• GFI MailEssentials Quarantine Action Services