No email notifications after upgrade from TI 2010 to TI 2011

Similar Problem here. Mail server requires PO3 auth before SMTP but there is no option while the manual describes such option.

Greetings

I've just updated from build 5519 to build 6574 of ATIH2011, and now I cannot even send a test e-mail successfully! If I use the correct username and password I just get 'Failed to send the test e-mail. Check the specified e-mail settings'.

I know the password is correct because if I use the wrong password I get the following error message instead:

'Failed to send the test e-mail. Authentication failed. Check the specified e-mail settings'.

So why has this suddenly stopped working in build 6574?

Steven

This could also be caused by your Anti-virus or Anti-spyware which need to know about the change.

My anti-virus/anti spyware does not certify programs for outgoing connections, and I have tried temporarily disabling it but I can still not send emails from True Image.

I am sure that some communication is happening with the SMTP server because if I enter an invalid username I get the error message
"Failed to send the text e-mail. Authentication failed. Check the specified e-mail settings."
but if I use the correct username and password it just says
"Failed to send the text e-mail. Check the specified e-mail settings."

This same issue is also being discussed in http://forum.acronis.com/forum/16533

GroverH wrote:

This could also be caused by your Anti-virus or Anti-spyware which need to know about the change.

What change? There isn't one for me - I just installed the new build of 2011 over the top of the older one! Must be a problem with the new build...

Steven

Acronis are looking into this so I understand.

The problem seems to be contained to those who don't require user names and or passwords to log into their email servers.

Does that seem to be the problem here?

"The problem seems to be contained to those who don't require user names and or passwords to log into their email servers."

I DO require a user name and password to log into my email server. Did you mean to say "The problem seems to be contained to those who do require..."

Colin B wrote:

Acronis are looking into this so I understand.

The problem seems to be contained to those who don't require user names and or passwords to log into their email servers.

Does that seem to be the problem here?

No, the login to my mail server requires user name and password. This is required on both PO3 and SMTP server.

Greetz

In my case: Yes
My mail server does not require user name and password.

It's strange. I tried another email account at another ISP and with this account I can send mails with ATIH. The working account requires login at port 25 the non working at port 587. So I deactivated firewall and av software but this changed nothing. Thought it was just luck and used my third mail account that also uses port 25 for SMTP and this account works too.
Maybe ATIH has problems with port handling.

I can send a test e-mail successfully if I use Gmail's SMTP server (using SSL and username and password), but can't send if I use my own ISP's SMTP server (no encryption, no username and password). The latter worked fine before build 6574.

Same here... I tried all the settings allowed by Acronis to no aval... Frustrating... Especially that this was working pretty well on prior build and that it seems that there is a lot of people having the problem... Wonder if the software is tested before shipping. On the bright side, I still having Ghost installer and it still sending me e-mail notifications... Still, hope this is going to get fixed soon.

Same here... I tried all the settings allowed by Acronis to no aval... Frustrating... Especially that this was working pretty well on prior build and that it seems that there is a lot of people having the problem... Wonder if the software is tested before shipping. On the bright side, I still having Ghost installer and it still sending me e-mail notifications... Still, hope this is going to get fixed soon.

Exactly my problem and solution
Steven Rangeley
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Joined: 2009-12-14
Posts: 42
Send PM: I can send a test e-mail successfully if I use Gmail's SMTP server (using SSL and username and password), but can't send if I use my own ISP's SMTP server (no encryption, no username and password). The latter worked fine before build 6574.

Thanks Steve

Morris Johnson wrote:

Exactly my problem and solution
Steven Rangeley
Offline
Forum Member
Joined: 2009-12-14
Posts: 42
Send PM: I can send a test e-mail successfully if I use Gmail's SMTP server (using SSL and username and password), but can't send if I use my own ISP's SMTP server (no encryption, no username and password). The latter worked fine before build 6574.

Thanks Steve

All very well for those of us with Gmail accounts, but what about those without?!!? Acronis need to release a quick fix to mend what they've broken in this build :-)

Steven

Steven Rangeley wrote:

Morris Johnson wrote:

Exactly my problem and solution
Steven Rangeley
Offline
Forum Member
Joined: 2009-12-14
Posts: 42
Send PM: I can send a test e-mail successfully if I use Gmail's SMTP server (using SSL and username and password), but can't send if I use my own ISP's SMTP server (no encryption, no username and password). The latter worked fine before build 6574.

Thanks Steve

All very well for those of us with Gmail accounts, but what about those without?!!? Acronis need to release a quick fix to mend what they've broken in this build :-)

Steven

Steven Rangeley wrote:

Morris Johnson wrote:

Exactly my problem and solution
Steven Rangeley
Offline
Forum Member
Joined: 2009-12-14
Posts: 42
Send PM: I can send a test e-mail successfully if I use Gmail's SMTP server (using SSL and username and password), but can't send if I use my own ISP's SMTP server (no encryption, no username and password). The latter worked fine before build 6574.

Thanks Steve

All very well for those of us with Gmail accounts, but what about those without?!!? Acronis need to release a quick fix to mend what they've broken in this build :-)

Steven

In my experience, Acronis has never been very prompt to respond, no matter how may other places have posted workarounds.

I have been using Ghost succesfully for many years and I just bought Acronis 2011 for my new WS with Windows 7 Pro as I read a lot of good things about Acronis and that I really like the concept and GUI of 2011. But this is the second major bug that I found in the software (the other being that Acronis just "die" when I try to delete a backup from the Acronis GUI) and both are 100% repetable and in very commonly used areas... In addition, as I'm going through this forum, I'm getting educated about the slowness delivering fixes... Was planning to un-install Ghost and rely on Acronis but I think that I'm going to wait until my comfort level about Acronis increases... And potentially do the opposite: uninstall Acronis and keep using Ghost if I see no action from Acronis on these critical problems. A good start would be to get somebody from Acronis acknowledging the problem and providing some kind of action plan/schedule for a fix. A workaround that actually works would be great also...

I see I'm not the only one with the same issue. I have also upgraded from True Image Home 2010 to True Image Home 2011, and also moved to Telstra Business Broadband. I still have my previous ISP mailbox active and the test notfications work. However, using Telstra's SMTP outgoing mail it fails. Outlook works with all my Telstra mail boxes (I have 4 of them) all have the same password.

As many people have mentioned, this is not a firewall and antivirus issue, as you can use at least one mailbox sucessfully i.e. the Gmail. Is it the ISP rejecting the test email as Spam? I logged a job with Telstra and smtp.telstrabusiness.com does not have any blocking on it.

My background is application support/systems administration/system testing. I am truely perplexed with why this fails to work. Considering MS Outlook can send test messages.

Time for the developers to review their code? Perhaps the code was created on a Friday arvo? This shouldn't be that difficult!

PS - I have also a case open with Acronis, and I have provided WireShark output as they requested.

Do you think a new build will be available soon????

David

According to the release notes, the latest build 6597 has a fix in this area. But I did install it and I still having the exact same problem... Does anybody in this thread tried and was successfull sending e-mail notifications after the update?

Thanks.

No, it still doesn't work for me, regardless of whether I input username and password (which I DON'T use to send e-mail through Thunderbird) or not. It also seems to be trying to force me to enter a username - WHY?!!?

Same problems here... and I posted in my own thread on the topic (http://forum.acronis.com/forum/16905). Build 5519 worked fine for me (and as I recall 6574 worked too) and my SMTP server requires NO authentication. Now I cannot send email either unauthenticated or changing to use my ISP's authenticated SMTP service. Disabled all AV services for incoming and outgoing email and it doesn't help. Test email always fails.

It's "FB".

**** UPDATE ****

While I still cannot send unauthenticated email in ATIH build 6597 via SMTP on Port 25, I did just get it working on SSL with port 465. My outlook client does not require the domain as part of the username to send authenticated mail, so for example... say my SMTP username is "abcde", thats all I entered in Outlook. That fails in ATIH.

So I just tried using the fully qualified SMTP username - like "jsimmons@cox.net" in ATIH and lo and behold, the test message is sent successfully. I guess this requirement may vary from one ISP / SMTP server to another. Try it ans see what happens in your case.

I have installed Update 1 (build 6597) and the problem has not been resolved.

My case # with Acronis is 00963385, and I have provided them with a 4mb "AcronisInfo" file at their request.

Yes "FB".

THANKS!!! I use also Cox so I just did exactly what you describe and the e-mails are going through. Still, something is broken as I didn't needed to use SSL or provide my user/passwd before the build that broke e-mail notification. Well, at least, thanks to you, I have a workaround.

Glad I could help. I can't take all credit as another forum member suggested trying the fully qualified email username.

-Jim

I think the problem is the absence of the "log on to incoming mail server" check box, which is required by many ISPs before access to the outgoing mail is permitted. This box existed in the previous version of TI but is not found on build 6579 or earlier of TI 2011.

This bug is unforgivably sloppy.

Robert Jacobs wrote:

I think the problem is the absence of the "log on to incoming mail server" check box, which is required by many ISPs before access to the outgoing mail is permitted. This box existed in the previous version of TI but is not found on build 6579 or earlier of TI 2011.

This bug is unforgivably sloppy.

Perhaps... but I don't think that explains my initial issue that unauthenticated email can't be sent. In older versions of ATIH, I could provide the outbound SMTP server host name, and choose port 25 and all was well with the world. Now for some reason it insists I provide a username and password. Test email always fails in that configuration, I assume because ATIH tries to authenticate but thats not expected on SMTP at port 25. Switching to SSL and port 465 does work.

No changes in that notification issue with the new build. Some mail accounts work other doesn't depending on ISP.

Stephan,

I solved the issue by entering my full email address in the username (as suggested by James). My POP email provided is Yahoo! Plus which requires SMTP authentication with SSL on port 465.

W., James,
Did you try to just enter a blank character in the required fields? It looks like it makes ATI happy enough.

Pat,

the provider I want to use doesn't support login with full email address and btw ATIs notification works with normal username on other ISPs. All accounts I tried are working fine with my email client.

I am having the same issue in not being able to send a test message on any port. My email requires signon. TI2010 worked perfect with the brackets

Currently the windows firewall is turned off and no antuivirus....my PC is basically "raw dog" and unprotected. So I know there's nothin blockin the test mail.

has anyone had any luck?

I personally like TI2010 better

The latest build of 2011 (6597) seems to have fixed one thing in the email notifications but broken something else.

@Robert,

Are you saying that build 6597 isn't accepting your user name and password or that it isn't sending the email and the test email fails?

Thank you for replying so quickly.

I have installed the latest build 6597.

the test email fails

I just tested with my gmail account and it works...I'm going to try to have it fwd to the email address I need it to go to (which goes to my phone as well)

Try this workaround posted by two people here

thanks buddy!

I just replied the the post on that thread for more info, but I have to share part of that reply with you guys as well.

I SAID..."Also, I agree, True Image Home is the WORST release I've seen from them. I pushed TIH2010 to all my clients for home and small biz use and heck, i even bought it for them....NOW I STOPPED referring the Acronis product because of the number of major issues such as the email notification. They are in the backup business and should understand how important it is to a customer to know if the backup failed or succeeded....commercial or residential clients!

So I have to tell you guys what my client said to me about ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE HOME 2011. Its the best analogy I've heard in a long time!

He said: "True Image Home is like hanging out at a sports bar with a cool ugly fat chick. She's cool because she can talk sports all night...... but she's hard to look at! Meaning, True Image Home gets the job done, but the interface is hard to look at!......."

A couple of days later we rolled back to TIH2010 where he was happier."  

no go on the workaround

I have had success using the style mymail@myisp.net with SSL and port 465. My ISP offers optional encrypted email. All I have to do is change my ISPs mail server address from mail.myisp.net to securemail.myisp.net , change ports and tick SSL and it is that easy. I have Gmail but have not tried it because my Gmail is the destination for my Acronis emails. I use Gmail to filter out all the success emails so that I only see the failures.

My dsl router modem has a firewall in it which includes port blocking. I had to construct a rule to allow use of port 465. Those that are succeeding with Outlook but not Acronis should check what port Outlook is using and ensure that Acronis is using the same port.

I am going to try to describe my experience with this issue. In version 10 I had the email alerts setup to go through my ISP's SMTP server smtp.myisp.com. In version 10 Acronis did NOT require you to enter a username and password, which is good because my ISP does not require a username and password to relay email through their SMTP server via port 25.

After upgrading to version 11, I was editing my scheduled backup and found that I was not able to save the settings because suddenly Acronis 11 was requiring me to input a username and password for the SMTP server. Unfortunately, after trying every possible combination, it was clear to me that my ISP will not let me relay through their SMTP server on port 25 if I type in ANY username or password.

So, since my primary email address is a Gmail account, I decided to try to relay through the Gmail SMTP server smtp.gmail.com. I use IMAP to download my Gmail to Outlook so I just copied the settings that I had in Outlook. This was a mistake. Using Outlook with IMAP to download your Gmail requires you to use port 587 with TLS encryption. If you try to use TLS and port 587 in Acronis 11 it will CRASH. It happened to me several times. I then decided to try Gmail again using SSL and port 465 along with my Gmail email address as the username and my Gmail password. With this setting everything works fine.

Acronis needs to eliminate the username/password requirement for the SMTP server so that people can use their ISP's SMTP server if they want to.

Acronis needs to get their act together. I bought my ATIH 2011 on 30 November 2011. I also downloaded the manual then. The Front page says Update 1 and the size is 7997KB. The email notification settings are on P69 of that manual and they describe the settings that were in ATIH 2010. Not much use for ATIH 2011.

I downloaded the manual again today. The front page still says Update 1 but the size on disk is now 8001KB. WTF. No other indications that things have been updated except it has one less page, now 222 pages. I looked at the Notifications email settings and they dont describe any ATIH 2010 or 2011 that I know but they are looking more like ATIH 2011 now.

I know it's hard to ensure that everything is in a manual but Acronis do not help us users by issuing updates to manuals without any indications. Surely a revision date or number or a list that indicates changes to sections, at a minimum, would be not too hard . That way we could determine if our manual was out of date.

These sorts of policies or lack of policies where you issue changes to documentation with no indications, cause significant dissatisfaction and lack of confidence among the users. I have now stopped recommending ATIH 2011 to others until the product is mature. I see it has a long way to go to get to that stage.

There is another thread running in this forum about the User Interface. To research these email settings I went into the Acronis 2011 File Backup Notifications settings to check against the manual. I made no additions or changes to anything. When finished I backed out by closing the panels by clicking on the x on the panel Title Bar. It took the program about 2 minutes to close the main panel. On the Title Bar it showed (Not Responding). There was no disk activity that I noticed and no significant CPU activity (less than 1%). What was it doing all of that time? That is another reason I have stopped recommendations.

I just recalled that in previous versions of Acronis TIH i used to manually edit the email options in the backup scripts to achieve what I wanted. I cant recall much detail about what I did but I thought I would put the idea out here for anyone who may wish to experiment. While you can make a set of common or default settings, once you create a backup script the Notify Options are set until you edit that script. So you will need to edit every script depending on what you want to change.

You can find the scripts (on my machine Win 7 Pro) here C:\Users\All Users\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts\ . The filenames are long strings of hexadecimal numbers end with .tib.tis . These scripts appear to be edited each time that the script is run. So sort your view by date. In my system, deleted scripts do not appear to be removed, just no longer referenced.

These scripts are XML text so can be edited with any text editor as long as you can get the editor to open the script for edit. I use EditPad Pro which will edit any text file.  There is an EditPad Lite version available for free.

When you open a script you can find which one it is by looking for the script name group which starts on the 9th line. A sample follows

<display>
    MyBackupName
</display>

The script name is shown above in italics.  Now follows is the email settings

<notify>
    <email address="MyMail@gmail.com" enabled="1" encryption-type="ssl" from="" long_format="1" password="MyEmailEncryptedPassword" pop-before-smtp="false" pop-server="" pop-server-port="0" server="securemail.myisp.net" server-port="465" subject="Acronis True Image Home Notification from Bob-Desktop-PC" user="MyEmailName">
       <notify_mode full_log="true" operation_complete="true" operation_fail="true" operation_message="true" />
    </email>
</notify>

Any strings in italics have been changed from what was in my script. The subject is not the one that is sent. Acronis sends the name of the script followed by the final execution status of the script. See what you can do with this info.

Bob Denton wrote:

Acronis needs to get their act together. ........

These sorts of policies or lack of policies where you issue changes to documentation with no indications, cause significant dissatisfaction and lack of confidence among the users. I have now stopped recommending ATIH 2011 to others until the product is mature. I see it has a long way to go to get to that stage.

I agree. What concerns me most is that there appear to be way too many issues with ATIH 2011 and by the time (or if) Acronis gets them resolved and a good build out in the field for users to use, it'll be time for next years version... and the process will start all over. :(

My plan at the moment is to nurse ATIH 2011 along and see if some decent (or at least better) builds are released this year that resolve some of my issues (and believe me I haven't reported them all in this forum, since others already have). If so, I'll probably stick with it but skip any future releases until I see they've changed their ways.

My advice to Acronis is to completely forget about a 2012 release and focus on getting 2011 "right" and then move forward. If they don't do this, a lot of previously loyal customers will go elsewhere.

-J-

For those users haviing trouble sending e-mail notifications via TrueImage, have you considered using the options provided by your ISP Your problem is a problem in sending and your ISP is the easiest method to send an email. Your incoming mail address is not involved in any failure to send. If you are not normally using the e-mail provided by your ISP, their outgoing mail services can still be used to send your message regardless if another e-mail provider is providing most of your e-mail services.

First, I would direct you to the posting by Bob Denton and others who have had success.

Many of us connect to the internet using either DSL or cable known as the ISP provider. A user name and password is needed to access your ISP. This user name and password may be stored in your modem or router configurationor or e-mail client (Outlook Express/Thunderbird. etc) outgoing settings. You may not have to provide this yourself each login but it is information being provided to the ISP every time you log into the internet. Each ISP provides instructions on the settings needed to send mail via the their specific ISP--even if are using another e-mail provider.

If you want to create or add a customized subject line, you can edit the TI script ID and change the subject name from what TI is using to the subject name you want used. While TI does not ask for a subject title, one is provided inside the Script and it can be altered to your needs.

I'm where Bob and James are... I actually used Ghost for many, many years and just decided to give it a try with Acronis after looking at ATIH 2011. Nice concept and nice GUI. Looks like I picked the wrong time... I'm in software development for more than 28 years and I can tell you that after observing the evolution of the builds and browsing the forums that Acronys has a major engineering processes problem: QA seems out of control (easy to found bugs are not found before release, fixes are not validated and documentation is not validated against released software) and development does not seems to be able to understand problems reported byusers and provide good fixes. These are not uncomon problems with software companies but experienced companies react right away because this is the best way to kill a product and lose customer confidence. Hopefully Acronys realise this and act switfly... But for the time being, I will continue to run Ghost as my primary backup software and continue to watch how ATIH evolves. And not recomend ATHI 2011 to colleages and friends... Sorry, backup software is too important to muck around...

For those users haviing trouble sending e-mail notifications via TrueImage, have you considered using the options provided by your ISP Your problem is a problem in sending and your ISP is the easiest method to send an email. Your incoming mail address is not involved in any failure to send. If you are not normally using the e-mail provided by your ISP, their outgoing mail services can still be used to send your message regardless if another e-mail provider is providing most of your e-mail services.

Actually... this is precisely what I've been doing for the last few versions of ATIH (including the earlier builds of 2011). My ISP only required SMTP outbound server name, port 25 for unencrypted SMTP, and a "sender" email name; no authentication required. The current ATIH 2011 build has no place to enter the sender email name, and it requires authentication fields (username and password) even when the ISP doesn't need it. The end result is I cannot use my ISP's unauthenticated, unencrypted SMTP service to send Acronis notifications as I could in previous builds. I now have to send through an alternate SMTP service my ISP has that includes authentication and encryption or turn off ATIH notifications altogether.

Thanks for the explanation, GroverH. My problem -and likely of others as well- is different, however.

When sending a mail, ATIH 2011 (I am running the latest build, 6597) starts the SMTP session with my ISP.
After the TCP handshake (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK) the SMTP server responds by sending the init-string.
ATIH sends the "EHLO [pcname]" string and the SMTP server responds with "Hello", some settings and ends with "250 OK"

Now comes the problem: ATIH tries to authenticate, sending the string "AUTH LOGIN" and since that is not supported on my ISP (remember I do not have to authenticate, normally) the SMTP server sends the error "504 5.7.4 Unrecognized authentication type".
This in turn is interpreted by ATIH as a "failed authentication" and the mail-sending fails.
The connection towards the SMTP server is terminated by ATIH, not by the SMTP server.

As you can see, there is not yet any username/password sending going on, so basically there is nothing you can do about this by configuration. It should be patched in the ATIH code.
You can pretty much reproduce this by setting up a telnet session to your ISP SMTP server:
cmd> telnet [smtp-of-isp] 25
EHLO [pc-name]
AUTH LOGIN
QUIT

Hope I can send the logs to acronis-support and maybe they can add a "no authentication needed" checkbox or so.
Will for now stick with the workaround of using GMAIL, thanks all for mentioning!

Anne Brussaard wrote:

Thanks for the explanation, GroverH. My problem -and likely of others as well- is different, however.

When sending a mail, ATIH 2011 (I am running the latest build, 6597) starts the SMTP session with my ISP.
After the TCP handshake (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK) the SMTP server responds by sending the init-string.
ATIH sends the "EHLO [pcname]" string and the SMTP server responds with "Hello", some settings and ends with "250 OK"

Now comes the problem: ATIH tries to authenticate, sending the string "AUTH LOGIN" and since that is not supported on my ISP (remember I do not have to authenticate, normally) the SMTP server sends the error "504 5.7.4 Unrecognized authentication type".
This in turn is interpreted by ATIH as a "failed authentication" and the mail-sending fails.
The connection towards the SMTP server is terminated by ATIH, not by the SMTP server.

As you can see, there is not yet any username/password sending going on, so basically there is nothing you can do about this by configuration. It should be patched in the ATIH code.
You can pretty much reproduce this by setting up a telnet session to your ISP SMTP server:
cmd> telnet [smtp-of-isp] 25
EHLO [pc-name]
AUTH LOGIN
QUIT

Hope I can send the logs to acronis-support and maybe they can add a "no authentication needed" checkbox or so.
Will for now stick with the workaround of using GMAIL, thanks all for mentioning!

Anne, refer to my previous post which shows contents of the backup script email section. You may be able to fix your problem by setting the following values in the script:

encryption-type="" from="YourEmail" long_format="0" password="" server-port="25" user=""

and then setting other fields as appropriate. This is guesswork on my part and it may not work. I dont need to do this as my ISP supports secure email with authentication plus I have Gmail as a backup.

I am using my newly purchased ATIH 2011, Update1, Build 6696 and have the same problem you are discussing.
My Qwest DSL ISP does not require authentication.
If I leave the Username and Password boxes blank and send a test message, ATI says it succeeded, but I never get the email in my Outlook.
Since ATI won't let me exit by OK unless I fill the boxes, I put in my Username and Password.
Now the test message fails authentication.
My ATIH 2010 did not require the credentials and sent the notifications fine.
Is it really possible that Acronis can't issue a build update not requiring the credentials, even temporarily, until they fix this?

In a word no. I believe Acronis are now only working on ATI 2012.

Acronis I believe are just not interested. There are no posts here from them and if there were then the post would just promise "jam tomorrow".