Build 9678 - Smartermail now Broken

Problem reported by Chris Danks - 7/7/2026 at 9:15 AM

Submitted

Has anyone else had this issue with upgrading from Build 9673 (Jun 26, 2026) to Build 9678 (Jul 1, 2026)

we upgraded by running the installer, once finished we noticed mailservice.exe quit immediately with:

Faulting application name: MailService.exe, version: 100.0.9678.26240, time stamp: 0x69e20000
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.26100.32995, time stamp: 0xb2a5d42f
Exception code: 0xc00000fd
Fault offset: 0x0000000000166f97
Faulting process id: 0x6248
Faulting application start time: 0x1DD0E229E6C11CC
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\SmarterTools\SmarterMail\Service\MailService.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: d48113a1-116d-4388-a179-54277cb2fb8f
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

I then did this:

Uninstalled Smartermail
rebooted
reinstalled smartermail (using latest 9673)

Mailservice.exe started but nothing was working and this was output to event viewer over and over:

Category: SoapCore.SoapEndpointMiddleware
EventId: 0
SpanId: c1b8499333c68ce1
TraceId: 8895cacc75af7daba96040f776becde7
ParentId: 0000000000000000
ConnectionId: 0HNMS7K8L2NU9
RequestId: 0HNMS7K8L2NU9:00000020
RequestPath: /Services/svcProductInfo.asmx

An error occurred processing the message

Exception:
System.Reflection.TargetParameterCountException: Parameter count mismatch.
at System.Reflection.MethodBaseInvoker.ThrowTargetParameterCountException()
at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture)
at System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke(Object obj, Object[] parameters)
at SoapCore.DefaultOperationInvoker.InvokeAsync(MethodInfo methodInfo, Object serviceInstance, Object[] arguments) in /_/src/SoapCore/DefaultOperationInvoker.cs:line 16
at SoapCore.SoapEndpointMiddleware`1.ProcessMessage(Message requestMessage, SoapMessageEncoder messageEncoder, IAsyncMessageFilter[] asyncMessageFilters, HttpContext httpContext, IServiceProvider serviceProvider) in /_/src/SoapCore/SoapEndpointMiddleware.cs:line 493

21 Replies

Reply to Thread

Chris Danks Replied

7/7/2026 at 9:21 AM

update from support that i am trying now and hopefully it'll bring our SM server back to life:

1. Uninstall Smartermail
2. Restore latest backup of

C:\Program Files (x86)\SmarterTools\SmarterMail\Service\Settings\settings.json

3. downgrade to previous smartermail build.

i'll reply if this fixes it! however i feel build 9678 should be pulled.

Chris Danks Replied

7/7/2026 at 9:52 AM

this didn't fix it and we remain down for 2 hours. hopefully support will respond to me soon.

Christian Schmit Replied

7/7/2026 at 10:04 AM

For us (build 9678), the service fails and crashes during the first initialization/startup after a Windows reboot. However, it starts successfully on the second attempt and continues to run without any known issues. After each subsequent Windows reboot, the same behavior occurs again.

Douglas Foster Replied

7/7/2026 at 11:18 AM

@Christian

Sounds like you need to set your service to delayed start.

I use this setting because my SM depends on ISCSI disks, which are slow to appear because of startup dependencies.

Christian Schmit Replied

7/7/2026 at 11:49 AM

@Douglas Foster
Thank you for the suggestion. However, we are not using any iSCSI storage. Our setup consists of a Dell PowerEdge R760xs with directly attached (DAS) storage.

rick Replied

7/7/2026 at 8:00 PM

I keep skipping releases because I always come here first looking to see if it's safe, and it hasn't been. Last issue I read was something about SpamFoo being an issue. Now crashing? That's all I need... hundreds of people calling about their email being down!

Dave Replied

7/8/2026 at 6:40 AM

@Chris Danks any update?

Chris Danks Replied

7/8/2026 at 9:18 AM

we were down 4 hours which was a pain!

We're waiting on a fix from Smartertools, for now we had to roll back 2 updates from before they introduced SpamFoo.

Tim Uzzanti Replied

7/8/2026 at 9:45 AM

Employee Post

Chris,

I don't mind people sharing their experiences, but your post makes it sound like you were left abandoned when, in reality, we responded almost immediately.

For example, your standard support ticket was opened at 8:30 a.m. We responded at 9:12 a.m. with the guidance to replace the settings.json file. Then an emergency ticket was opened at 11:07 a.m., and by 12:09 p.m. we did exactly what we told you to do at 9:12am.

Had you followed our initial response, you would have been back online in less than 45 minutes. We’re lucky to have a vendor who responds the same day, let alone less than an hour.

The domain loading issue (unrelated to SpamFoo) Chris ran into is VERY rare. Chris has a lot of domains on his server and is running into a timing issue, which our development team has been helping him with and is providing a custom build.

Every company has bugs; it’s how you handle them, and we often handle them incredibly well and this is a good example.

Tim Uzzanti

CEO

SmarterTools Inc.

www.smartertools.com

Douglas Foster Replied

7/8/2026 at 11:10 AM

The best defense against installation problems is virtualization with snapshots. On the one occasion when things wrong (because entered the wrong folder path)., rollback fix the problem like the install never happened.

SmarterMail is not the only company with install problems on specific machines. For the first several years after Win10 came out, almost every one of Microsoft's "mandatory" six-month update packages were accompanied by web reports about users whose PC was rendered unusable by the "improvement" package.

Dave Replied

7/8/2026 at 11:20 AM

@Tim Uzzanti Has there been any progress on why the crash itself happened?

Have there been any reports of it other then the 2 in this thread?

I want to upgrade a few of the servers this coming weekend, But, if there is an issue like that which is still being worked on it can wait.

Scott Johnson Replied

7/8/2026 at 2:45 PM

Do not use this version or any version past 9652. Many issues with rules and stability. SpamFoo does not add to the system other than load at this point. Fake QuickBooks invoices and password requests are considered good while legitimate invoices are considered spam. this is with over 200K emails in training.

Matt Petty Replied

7/8/2026 at 2:47 PM

Employee Post

Then turn off SpamFoo, SpamFoo finding things and being utilized as a spam provider has nothing to do with SmarterMail's ability to function as it did before that build, simply turn off SpamFoo if it's affecting your stability that much.

And when I say "Turn off SpamFoo", this implies at some point you turned it on, because it's off by default.

Matt Petty

Senior Software Developer

SmarterTools Inc.

www.smartertools.com

Brian Bjerring-Jensen - VonBjerring GmbH Replied

7/8/2026 at 11:57 PM

@Scott Johnson I havent upgraded as well and staying on 9652 for the moment. Normally it takes 4-5 releases to get the bugs sorted out after an introduction of new features.

SmP Replied

7/9/2026 at 7:22 AM

We're running the latest release (but not using SpamFoo) on Windows mail servers and it's working perfectly without issues so this seems to be more of an edge case.

Douglas Foster Replied

7/9/2026 at 8:23 AM

@Christian Schmit Your startup problem may have a different cause than mine, but it is almost certainly because of startup dependencies, all of which are fixed by setting the service to "Automatic (Delayed Startup)".

I would actually suggest to @Tim Uzzanti that Delayed Startup should be the default configuration for the SmarterMail service on Windows. SmarterMail cannot do anything useful until the network is ready, and it will not do anything very useful if the system is CPU bound or IO bound because of startup workload. The SmarterMail service is installed with no defined dependencies, so it will be one of the first things that Windows will try to launch. Starting that early is a recipe for trouble..

Gabriele Maoret - SERSIS Replied

7/9/2026 at 8:53 AM

We have been on 9678 for days now and have had NO problems whatsoever...

5 Windows Servers + 2 Linux Servers

Gabriele Maoret - Head of SysAdmins and CISO at SERSIS

Currently manages 7 SmarterMail installations (1 in the cloud for SERSIS which provides services to a few hundred third-party email domains + 6 on-premise for customers who prefer to have their mail server in-house)

Tim Uzzanti Replied

7/9/2026 at 9:00 AM

Employee Post

All,

The domain loading issue is a timing issue within SmarterMail itself, affecting our threading internally. It has affected just a handful of people, and that is why we have needed to work with and provide custom builds for those customers to figure it out. It has nothing to do with any additional services or dependencies. It also has nothing to do with SpamFoo.

Douglas, your suggestion of delay starting SmarterMail on Windows is a good idea in general because of how slow Windows is to come online. The delay start is VERY important if you are mounting external drives, to ensure their available on SmarterMail startup.

Tim Uzzanti

CEO

SmarterTools Inc.

www.smartertools.com

Scott Johnson Replied

7/9/2026 at 9:03 AM

https://portal.smartertools.com/community/a98023/domain-content-filtering-not-working-since-upgrading-to-9673-jun-26-2026-and-then-to-9678-jul-1-2026.aspx

rick Replied

7/9/2026 at 9:16 AM

@Tim Uzzanti

I just want to point something out - with regards to your message to Chris above.

You guys are on the safe side of this equation. We have many hundreds to many thousands of people relying on a service that gets checked real time. People use email from everything from getting medical results, one-time codes, order acknowledgments to even airline updates, etc.

We get the immediate lash back when something goes wrong. So, while we might hear it from hundreds or thousands of users, you guys hear a condensed version of the issue from just the system admin, like Chris.

Not saying you or Chris are right or wrong, but I think it's important to understand where the emotions come from when people get anxious about their SM installations not running properly. I dread even a quick reboot because that can ultimately cause an instant error message in many people's hands (mobile phone).

John Quest Replied

7/10/2026 at 4:00 PM

Thank you for the suggestion. However, we are not using any iSCSI storage. Our setup consists of a Dell PowerEdge R760xs with directly attached (DAS) storage.

That can still have micro-second delays upon a server startup.

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