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 We're runnig version 4.3 and suddenly the CPU use is at 100%. What should I do to troubleshoot?

goodluck trying to get honest support on the forums that doesn't include a "pay 35$" suggestion... we have 10% cpu being used and 50k items waiting in the spool. why doesn't smartermail use the other 90% of my system's power?

Interesting comment.  I'm sure most of the customers on this forum will disagree with you on the "honest" comment.  And, I find it a little ironic after reading some topics in the SmarterTrack forum where they were praising one of our employees "Grady Werner" for providing so much time and information into the public BETA. 

The customer activity on this from is amazing and many of our customers are very intelligent and share a lot of good information.  I would suggest that you change the way you respond so that you don't loose credibility on the forum.

Lastly, the forum is not intended to be used as support, it is intended for customers to communicate with each other.  If you have an issue that you need direct help on, please utilize our support department. 

how come you respond so swiftly to these types of comments... but when I post two posts on bulk mail settings for two weeks... and bump it.. i receive 0 replies?

 I'll try to be more patient in the future. Its very frustrating however to have powerful servers only using 10% of their power... with little documentation on how to improve server performance for bulk senders.

Also do you have a solution or idea for the original poster? I didn't intend on hijacking the thread. If you have 100% cpu usage... which antispam feature are you using? Are you using any blacklists? How many subspool folders do you use? How many smtp out threads do you have?

I think the reason you aren't getting much help with your bulk mail questions is that very few users on this forum have experience sending large volumes of spam. Most of us are concerned with reducing spam. 

Your probably right:)

 I was hoping the community or smartertools employees would be able to help. I think if I could improve our bulk mail delivery, we could probably win over a few hundred users from IMAIL since they have been waiting for bulk mail solutions for 9 months from Imail... who instead used their customers for experimenting with their beta software... IMAIL has kind of hosed their customers... saying new files would improve their delivery rates... then you find out that they do not... but that they are the files that would be used by their next major release (which isn't optimized for bulk either).

 Thats how I found out about smartermail, alot of users said "I'm so frustrated... we might switch to smartermail". lol

Sadly, I in many ways agree with Jerger on Smartertool's "selective" support.

 Often times, Smartertools is exactly what they claim to be in their replies, attentive and responsive.  However, at the same time, if an issue arises with their software that they do not want to address and deal with, they will simply ignore ignore the poster's request and in my case denied an issue even existed, even with their "paid" support services.  The 100% CPU usage issue is definitely one of those issues and it has been raised several times by several different people and I always manage to add my 2 cents in the thread because of the way it has been blatantly ignored by Smartertools.

 The most common cause of the 100% CPU issue is with the ClamAV process on 64 bit windows.  You never mentioned which version of Smartermail which version of windows you were running, however, another customer also had reported a CPU issue in this thread http://www.smartertools.com/forums/p/16110/45622.aspx#45622, that was never really resolved.

 The ClamAV problem has been posted about and discussed in several places including (several are me begging for a fix):

 http://www.smartertools.com/forums/p/18371/47151.aspx#47151
http://www.smartertools.com/forums/p/18246/46729.aspx#46729
http://www.smartertools.com/forums/t/18948.aspx
http://www.smartertools.com/forums/t/17519.aspx?PageIndex=1

The final thread is the loggest running and most detailed on the issue and includes a workaround (assuming it is ClamAV pegged at 100%).  Also evident in the thread is Smartertools lack of response to the issue until someone chimes in to praise their support after I bashed it only to finally invite a response from Smartertools that simply patted themselves on the back for doing nothing.

I have found the easiest way to troubleshoot CPU usage is to use the task manager. Open task manager, choose the second tab (Processes), then from the menu choose view->select columns. Click on the column that says CPU. This will tell you what is causing the spike and where to begin. Post back what you find out.

Oh please.
If SmarterTools is being "selective" on support on this issue, it is by providing support for their products. ClamAV is not their product. These forums are not SmarterTools support, they are our own. A large share, if not a majority, of helpful answers come from other users, with SmarterTools providing answers for some and mostly acknowledging bug reports and suggestions. If you want them to dedicate effort to a particular problem, open a ticket. You get two free when you buy the product, have you used them both? There is nothing wrong with that suppport model with a product as inexpensive as SmarterMail.

caplinktech:

Sadly, I in many ways agree with Jerger on Smartertool's "selective" support.

 (snip)

I had a similar issue once.  I found that something had gotten corrupted and it resulted in a pop retrieval puling data into the same account it was pulling from.  This resulted in large number of messages in the spool and 100% CPU.  I first disabled the pop retrieval service and then tracked down the account.  Once it was repaired I was able to restart the pop retrieval.

thats a common issue as well... try doing a repair/compact of your pst file in outlook