Mail Notification

[Justin]

I put my computer in stand-by mode before I left for the
movies. When I came back, I pressed the on button and the
computer went to the Welcome screen and I saw "Justin"
displayed as the user that I could click on.
(Currently "Justin" is the only user). Directly
under "Justin" it said:

1 Program running.

11 Unread mail messages.



I clicked on "Justin" and it brought me to my desktop.
Here's the thing, I use AOL for email and always have.
I've never setup any other email account and my computer
is only about a month old. What "11 Unread mail messages"
is it talking about? I checked my AOL email and I had 2
new emails.

Later....

I had a problem with one of my icons so I opened up
TweakUI and clicked on "Rebuild Icons." I then, out of
curiousity, clicked the drop-down menu to see what else
could be repaired. Low and behold I saw an option that
said, "Repair unread mail count." The description said:
Resets the unread mail count for the current user on the
Welcome screen (if friendly logon is enabled) and in any
other applications which follow the Windows unread mail
count procedure. I clicked "Repair Now" and went to the
Welcome screen and to my pleasant surprise, it only
said "Logged on" under "Justin", no mail count. So,
apparently TweakUI fixed it. My question is: What exactly
is it? (There are other options regarding Unread Mail in
the "Logon" section of TweakUI, but I still have no idea
what it is and what purpose it has.)

Even later...

I found something:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-
us;304148&Product=winxp

It discusses the Mail Notification on the Welcome screen
and explains, "The hyperlink is displayed only if you have
an e-mail client that is capable of updating the Welcome
screen running on your computer. Currently, there are only
two programs that support this feature: Microsoft Outlook
Express and Microsoft Windows Messenger." But I don't use
Outlook or Windows Messenger. Can anyone help? Thanks.

Justin

 

[purplehaz]

It's just as the info says. Mail notification. New versions of AOL mail will
use the welcome screen for notification as well. (the message you quote
about outlook express and messenger is a few years old actually, aol does it
now too)

 

[Guest]

But it said I had 11 Unread messages and when I checked my
email I only had 2. How can that be explained? Is it
telling me the unread mail count of perhaps all the
screenames on my account?

 

[purplehaz]

Unfortunatly the mail count feature is buggy at best. It often gets stuck
and only tweakui or a registry edit can fix it. Most just turn it off
completely in tweakui cause it always breaks and gets stuck.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the response. I just wanted to make sure
that it wasn't a trojan/virus sending emails unbeknownst
to me and the "unread messages" were "bounced emails" sent
back to me.

 

[purplehaz]

You're welcome.

Thank you for the response. I just wanted to make sure
that it wasn't a trojan/virus sending emails unbeknownst
to me and the "unread messages" were "bounced emails" sent
back to me.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I clicked "Repair Now" and went to the
Welcome screen and to my pleasant surprise, it only
said "Logged on" under "Justin", no mail count. So,
apparently TweakUI fixed it. My question is: What exactly
is it? (There are other options regarding Unread Mail in
the "Logon" section of TweakUI, but I still have no idea
what it is and what purpose it has.)

The *idea* is that you have a mail account with Hotmail , or possibly
other accounts, and this is to tell you - helpfully - when you logon
that there is mail there waiting. If does not work very well at best,
and I would use the TweakUI Logon setting to disable it altogether