Overview

When troubleshooting mail flow issues, it is sometimes necessary to enable/disable email processing without having to uninstall MailEssentials

This article provides the procedure to temporarily Enable or Disable MailEssentials Processing in order to isolate issues that are suspected to be unrelated to MailEssentials.

Solution

MailEssentials can be temporarily disabled and enabled in two ways. The automatic way through the Switchboard is recommended.

Follow the instructions provided below:

Automatic method

1. Navigate to Start > Programs > GFI MailEssentials > GFI MailEssentials Switchboard.

2. Click on the Troubleshooting tab. A green indicator confirms that email processing is currently Enabled.

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3. Click on the Disable button and accept the prompt to restart the IIS Admin Service

4. Click the Apply button.

Manual method

• For Exchange 2003:

  1. Navigate to  ..\GFI\MailEssentials\

  2. Double-click stop_snks.cmd file for executing instructions to unbind the sinks.

     Note: Two sets of stop_snks.cmd will be present in the folders GFI\MailEssentials\Antispam and GFI\MailEssentials\EmailSecurity in the MailEssentials 2012).

  3. Navigate to Start > Run... and type services.msc

  4. Verify that IIS Admin, SMTP, and the World Wide Web Publishing Services have all restarted.

• For Exchange 2007 / 2010:

  1. Open the Exchange Management Shell.

  2. Run the following cmdlet:

     • Get-TransportAgent

  3. The status of the enabled GFI MailEssentials agents is displayed as follows:

     • GfiAsRtSubmittedAgent = true

     • GfiAsRtRoutedAgent = true

     • GfiAsSmtpAgent  = true 

     • GfiAsSmtp2Agent = true

     • Note: If running MailEssentials 2012, the GfiAv- agents (responsible for the EmailSecurity portion) will also be listed:

     • GfiAvSmtpAgent = true

     • GfiAvRoutingAgent = true

  4. Stop the GFI Transport Agents by running the following cmdlets:

     • Disable-TransportAgent GfiAsRtSubmittedAgent

     • Disable-TransportAgent GfiAsRtRoutedAgent

     • Disable-TransportAgent GfiAsSmtpAgent

     • Disable-TransportAgent GfiAsSmtp2Agent

     • Disable-TransportAgent GfiAvSmtpAgent

     • Disable-TransportAgent GfiAvRoutingAgent

       • Note:  You'll receive a confirmation on whether you want to perform the action, select Yes on each prompt.

  5. Once complete, re-run the commandlet Get-TransportAgent to get the registered transport agents and confirm that they are all now disabled.

  6. Restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport service. 

Confirmation

• If MailEssentials processing was stopped using the recommended automatic method, the mail processing indicator will change from Green to Red and the Disable button will be greyed out as shown below:
  • 
• If using the manual method to disable mail processing, run theGet-TransportAgent  commandlet to get the registered transport agents and confirm that they are all now disabled by having status = false as shown below:

  • GfiAsRtSubmittedAgent = false

  • GfiAsRtRoutedAgent = false

  • GfiAsSmtpAgent  = false

  • GfiAsSmtp2Agent = false

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