>We are running a site where over 150.000 users are subscribed.

First question:  What do you have listed as the "Number of recipients per 
message" on the Advanced tab of IMail Administrator for that 
list?  According to Ipswitch, it should be 6,000.  If you have it as the 
default 25, it would explain your problem.  However, at 6,000, it will take 
a VERY long time for your list to get out.  As others have mentioned, for a 
list that big, you should probably look for a different tool to send out 
the E-mail.  If you really need to do it on the IMail server, our free 
Declude Queue will help out a lot (but not nearly as much as using a tool 
designed for sending such large lists).

>These people get a personalized newsletter every month.

Well, that scratches the first question.  You aren't using IMail's mailing 
list, so no need to answer that one.  So instead of having 25 processes 
each delivering 6,000 E-mails, you have 300,000 files sitting in the IMail 
spool.  That's very, very bad.  The OS will have serious troubles dealing 
with that volume of mail.  What software are you using that will send out 
150,000 personalized E-mails, but dump them all on a single mailserver?  I 
do hope it spaces them out long enough for the server to "digest" the E-mail.

>The newsletter will be created by the SQL server and will then be sent (via
>microsoft SMTP) to the mail server (imail).

If it's going through Microsoft SMTP, why add IMail to the equation?  You 
might just want to have Microsoft SMTP send the E-mail out directly.

>The problem occurs when the SQL server machine is sending all the mail to
>the mail server. the SMTP32.EXE gives the following error:
>
>Application popup: SMTP32.EXE - Application Error : The application failed
>to initialize properly (0xc0000142). Click on OK to terminate the
>application.

You can read all about this one at http://www.declude.com/dq.htm .  This is 
an issue that occurs because of a flaw in an undocumented Microsoft 
resource, combined with the large number of SMTP processes that IMail can 
start.

>This popup comes up about 100 times and, if unmanaged, it will crash the
>server totally.

Yes, that's part of the Microsoft end of the flaw.  Rather than not start 
another SMTP32.EXE process, Microsoft will cause the server to crash, by 
leaving hundreds or thousands of "half open" processes.  It's nasty.

>I have tried serveral workarounds yet, including increasing page-file,
>increasing MaxQueueProc, declude's queue and 'mistery heap' workaround. All
>without a good result. That's why i'm posting it here, hoping someone could
>solve this problem.
>I have reset MaxQueueProc to 30 again.

Increasing the MaxQueueProc value won't help; it will just make the problem 
worse.  Using Declude Queue, according to the best information we can get 
from Microsoft, should completely prevent the 0xc0000142 error -- but still 
can't get around having 1/3 MILLION files in one directory.  That's 
something most mailservers will have a hard time with.

                                                    -Scott
---
Declude: Anti-virus, Anti-spam and Anti-hijacking solutions for 
IMail.  http://www.declude.com

---
[This E-mail was scanned for viruses by Declude Virus (http://www.declude.com)]


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