MailEssentials antivirus update failures cause email flow to stop for version 22.x

Overview

Some GFI MailEssentials 22.x environments experience repeated antivirus engine update failures, particularly with Avira and BitDefender. These failures often display the error message:

“Files were successfully downloaded, but a failure occurred when updating local engine files.”
Error code: 0x80070002

When this occurs, the Email Exploit Engine (EED) may also fail to initialize due to a missing or corrupted database file (exploitdb.mdb). As a result:

• EED rules fail to load or scanning aborts.

• Email messages may be routed to the EmailSecurity\FailedMails folder.

• Mail flow may only resume when the affected antivirus engines are disabled.

This issue has been observed on all supported Windows Server versions running GFI MailEssentials 22.x.

Symptoms

You may experience one or more of the following symptoms:

1. Avira or BitDefender updates report:

   “Files were successfully downloaded, but a failure occurred when updating local engine files.”
   (Commonly accompanied by error 0x80070002)

2. Antivirus engines fail to initialize.

   • Avira logs loader DLL errors such as gfiaviraldr.dll (Error 126 / 0x8007007E).

3. EED rules do not load or scanning aborts.

   • EED update status shows failure.

   • EED logs display update or staging errors.

4. Emails accumulate under EmailSecurity\FailedMails.

   • Mail flow resumes only after disabling the failing engines.

5. Updates may intermittently alternate between success and failure every other run or hour.

Solution

Our Development Team has released a new version with the fix for the current issue. Please apply the steps in the article  - Upgrading to the latest version of MailEssentials - to upgrade to the new version.

1. GFIMailEssentials_New_Release_Bug_Fix_22.2

Note: If you are using SpamTag and facing connectivity issues with SpamTag please apply the steps in the article: Spam Tag cannot connect after upgrading to version 22.x.

Additional Step (If Issue Persists)

If the issue is not resolved after following the steps above:

1. Enable tracing in GFI MailEssentials.

2. Reproduce the issue to generate diagnostic data.

3. Collect and submit troubleshooting logs to GFI Support.

4. Run the ME Diagnostic script (in the linked document), from an elevated PowerShell window (Run as Administrator). This script will verify the presence and integrity of some of the key MailEssentials components related to this issue. After running the script, navigate to the following folder: C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\ME_Diagnostics and kindly send us the entire ME_Diagnostics folder (zipped), including both the .csv and .txt reports generated by the script.

Refer to:

• Creating and Submitting Troubleshooting Logs & other relevant info for GFI MailEssentials

• ME Diagnostic Script