winmail.exe starts up in windows 7

Hi, 

Welcome to Microsoft Windows 7 Answers Forum!   

Could you please answer these below questions?

a)      Did you perform an upgrade installation from vista to windows 7?

b)     Do you have email client on your computer?

As this issue could occur if some of the windows mail remnants are present on your computer, and also if you have backed up the windows mail files from your previous operating system.

Follow this below path to check whether you have any remnants of windows mail.

The Windows Mail files are located in

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail

Also you may try downloading the windows live on to your computer and check for the issue.

Follow this below link to download Windows mail.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/looking-for-windows-mail

Also follow the below forum link to run Malware scan on your computer and check for the issue.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistasecurity/thread/ba80504b-61f1-4d71-960f-b561798b7b42

Thanks and Regards:

Suresh Kumar- Microsoft Support.

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Hi,

I have upgraded from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit (Czech) and installed Windows Live Mail. This is not issue of typical customer who got surprised that Windows Mail is not available in Windows 7. The problem is that WinMail.exe is started on windows startup and shows prompt that I have no default email client (which is wrong because Windows Live Mail is there!). WinMail should not be started in Windows 7, right? It is a bug I suppose. This window needs to be closed every time after startup which is annoying and winmail.exe can be still found in task manager. I remember I had to kill it to be able to install windows live mail. I had to use offline installation of windows mail because of another issue with czech version of online installer (some component cannot be downloaded - issue experienced by many other customers). Windows live mail works and in its settings it seems to be registred as default email client.

I was searching for WinMail.exe in Startup folder and using msconfig, but I have not found why it is being started. How can I disable starting of windows mail on startup? Could it be some problem caused by error in upgrade procedures of Windows 7? How can I fix it?

Another issue is that computer got restarted by windows update while it was importing emails to Windows Live Mail. I am now not sure if everything is there. Is there a way how to repeat the import? I have backup of disk with Windows Vista and Windows Mail just before the Windows upgrade.

Thanks and Regards, Jakub

Other customer with same problem:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/9020-Purpose-of-winmail.exe-running-in-Windows-7

Does a tool like this help you find what is starting up automatically?

AutoRuns for Windows v9.35
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Other customer with same problem:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/9020-Purpose-of-winmail.exe-running-in-Windows-7

1. Grab SysInternals Process Explorer and run it. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
2. Click the Find menu, then click "Find Handle or DLL..."
3. Type "Windows Mail" (without quotes) in the box and click "Search"
4. Find whatever program isn't WinMail.exe, in my case it was SetPoint.exe, the driver/helper app for my Logitech mouse and keyboard.

Thanks Marcus! That must have been a lot of work to find the offending program. I too have this issue and it turned out to be SetPoint.exe that was using WinMail.exe to call home. That is why you won't find WinMail in any start up configuration, it is being called by another program. I've raised this issue with Logitech but have not heard back from them yet.