Overview

After a system reboot, the anti-spam scan engine crashes, causing emails to be moved to the FailedMails folder. The Application logs in the Event Viewer shows that gfiscans.exe is crashing with a fault in gfi_log.dll.

Faulting application name: gfiscans.exe, version: 21.6.11004.33, time stamp: 0x5e39198c
Faulting module name: gfi_log.dll, version: 21.6.11004.203, time stamp: 0x563c82b5

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\GFI\MailEssentials\Antispam\gfiscans.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\GFI\MailEssentials\Antispam\gfi_log.dll

Solution

Your issue is compatible with a current software defect caused by the .NET 4.8 framework for Windows and its cumulative updates, making the gfi_log.dll start a crash cascade in other modules. The only possible workaround is to disable tracing, as shown in the picture, and then applying the KB4580979 update, or, if that is not available for your Operating System, the latest .NET 4.8 update:

Make sure you disable tracing before you apply the .NET update so that the required reboot clears any idle process in the middle. 

Please follow the steps in the Reprocessing Emails Wrongly Moved to the FailedMails Folder article, in order to reprocess any failed mails you may need to.

Testing

After tracing is disabled and the latest .NET update is applied, the Antispam module is no longer crashing and emails are processed correctly.

If the issue still persists, please generate the troubleshooting logs as follows:

• Make sure that you have tracing enabled.
• Wait for at least 30 minutes to gather enough information and for the issue to be reproduced.
• Run the troubleshooter:
  1. Start > Programs > GFI MailEssentials > Troubleshooter
  2. Follow the Log Generation Wizard for collecting the required and pertinent information.
  3. Select New Case when completing the log generation to attach the logs to a new case that will be automatically created, or open a support ticket manually and attach the logs to that ticket, so that the Support team can investigate the problem.