142449 - Simple MAPI is no longer working in trunk builds

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Simple MAPI, defect, P2)

Description

[Nahor]

It used to work. Now it just display the browser window (if mozilla wasn't
started already) but no "compose" window.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.0+) Gecko/20020504

Comment 1

[WD]

Send to -> Mail Recipient does nothing on my PC
Win2k 2002050705
Mozilla set to default mail client in windows control panel

Comment 2

[Michael Baffoni]

Not only did mapi not work for me, when I removed the mapi32.dll (and renamed
mapi32bak.dll to mapi32.dll), it greyed out the "use mozilla as the default mail
application", even though Mozilla 1.0 client is selected as the default mail app
in control panels/internetoptions/programs/mail client.  Killing my profile and
reinstalling the binaries cleanly did NOT install a new Mapi32.dll (it is still
pointing at the old default mapi32.dll, no mapi32bak.dll is in the system32
directory).

BTW, could someone bump up the severity - this should at least be major, if not
cricital, for Windows machines - if this is broken, one of the major conduits of
sending files is broken.

Win2k, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.0+) Gecko/20020507

Comment 3

[Nahor]

From the definition of the severity, this is a normal one (there is a workaround
for it: open a compose window and drag the file from windows explorer). 

But cranking up the priority would be nice. I use this feature quite often. But
I'll let netscape people do it because I don't know how many really important
bugs are left. And the regression keyword should already help to put this bug on
their monitor (regression are usually a bad sign so I guess they check for that
regurlaly).

Comment 4

[Michael Baffoni]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that while I had the mozilla mapie32.dll in the
system32 directory, it would allow me to enable/disable the default mail
setting, but everytime I changed it, it would crash the application when I hit
the OK button.  Crashes are major in my book.  ;-)

Comment 5

[Nahor]

I don't have a mapi32.dll from Mozilla. The only I have is in my System32 and is
from Microsoft. So then it makes sense to me that if you remove it, you disable
the MAPI features from Windows (and by extension from Mozilla). But this has
nothing to do with Mozilla. Remove the DLL and try with Outlook and you should
have the same kind of problems.

Comment 6

[Michael Baffoni]

That is just it:  Mozilla is supposed to supply it's own MAPI config file (which
is why Mozilla only supports simple mapi at this time) - the mapi32.dll is the
file that is supposed to supply the interface for MAPI applications to access
the email portions of Mozilla.  When properly installed (say if you installed
Netscape 4.79), and set as the default mail application, the old Microsoft
mapi32.dll should be renamed to "mapi32bak.dll" and the mozilla (or netscape)
mapi32.dll should be copied in it's place to the system32 directory (it should
also be much much smaller - the MS mapi is almost 900k on my system, but the old
mozilla mapi32.dll was around 7k).  This doesn't appear to be happening, and so
the system is confused when it is set to Mozilla as the email client, but the MS
mapi is present.  At least that is how it worked on Netscape 4.x and with the
.99 builds of Mozilla that (if you discount the hung MS app) worked.

Comment 7

[WD]

In most cases, Mozilla will not (and definately *should not*) replace the
MAPI32.DLL file in the windows system directory.   For example, if you have IE5
or later installed on your machine, the MS-provided MAPI32.DLL is "smart" in
that it will forward the Simple MAPI requests to the DLL file indicated in the
registry.  See this for more info:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91702#c9
The NS4.x behavior of actually replacing the MAPI32.DLL file is *bad*, and it's
nice that Mozilla doesn't follow the same steps!   :)

The issue at hand here is this:
Simple MAPI is no longer working in the trunk builds, while it is working in the
RC2 branch builds.

I have installed both the latest trunk and branch builds (from the installer) on
my PC.   Simple MAPI is working with the Branch, but not with the trunk.   To
remove most variables, I had both trunk and branch installed at the same time. 
I would re-name the directory I installed branch to "mozilla" and simple mapi
would work.   I then would re-name the directory I installed trunk to "mozilla"
and simple mapi would not work.    (Mozilla would load if not already running,
but no mail window would pop up)

In the above testcases, the registry values are the same.  The only difference
was the actually mozilla files pointed to by the registry.    (The MAPI32.DLL
file in the system directory is the "smart" one provided by Microsoft, BTW)

Comment 8

[Michael Baffoni]

Whups, my bad.  I thought they just reimplemented 4.x SMAPI.  Thanks for
straightening me out.   ;-)

However, it doesn't explain why I had a 7k mapi32.dll in my system directory....

Comment 9

[Rajiv Dayal]

When you make Mozilla/Netscape6.x as the default mail app it checks whether the
mapi.32 dll is smart or not, if yes it doesnt do anything with it but if not it
will go ahead and replace it with its own version.

So, if you make Netscape 4x as default it will replace the existing mapi32.dll
(irrespective of whether it is smart or not like other messaging apps used to do
in those days since there was no concept of smart dll at that time) with its own
version. Now, if you install Mozilla/Netscape6.x since the existing mapi32.dll
is not the smart mapi.dll it will go ahead and replace it with its own. 

Michael, that is the reason you have this 7k file on your system.

Will take a look as soon as possible why its not working on trunk eventhough the
mapi code on both branch and trunk is same, setting priority to P2.

Comment 10

[Rajiv Dayal]

The "use mozilla as the default mail application" is greyed out since the 
mapi32.dll is not presently building on machines using 'gmake' for windows 
builds. The fix for bug # 131857 should also fix this one.

Comment 11

[Nahor]

It's now working again with build 2002051404.

Comment 12

[Michael Baffoni]

Verified.  MAPI not only works, but it stopped hanging Word/excel.  Yea!!!  Woohoo!

Comment 13

[Nahor]

As per comment 12 and 11