Microsoft RSS Blog

Hi,

Can you tell me why my feeds folders doesn't auto-close while changing from a feed to another feed (in another folder) ?

This behavior happens on Windows Vista Ultimate (UAC ON), not on XP Pro. (BTW, another problem resolved by itself : folders title wasn't bold when unread feeds inside was)

I usually have 160+ feeds in a bunch of folders and sub-folders and a little vbs i wrote to mark all feeds as read when needed.

(recursively explore all feeds and folders with a Microsoft.FeedsManager object)

TIA

Have the issue where folder title or feed title will not unbold although shows all read.

also recently am not able to subscribe to feeds will get error subscribing to feed  error.

is there anyway to update the store for feeds?? or run error correction as can be done in mail. ??  

Running about 200 feeds

I had this issue in XP and I tried the above steps, but unfortunately it didn't help.

However, I deleted the feeds folder and now it works properly (I'm sure I could've just deleted the FeedsStore file alone to fix the problem).

Jean-Marc, (if you haven't already figured this out) just go to advanced settings and you'll see an option that says "close unused folders in History and Favorites" (which should really include "Feeds", eh?)

Thanks Nathanscott,

Just the checkbox i searched for !

I get these errors:

TaskName                             Next Run Time            Status

==================================== ======================== ===============

User_Feed_Synchronization-{DC1FF25F- 04:10:00, 17/01/2007     Could not start

User_Feed_Synchronization-{DC1FF25F- 04:10:00, 17/01/2007     Could not start

HI MY FEEDS HIS GOINE CAN U HALP M FOR THATS PROBLEM BECOUSE MY MSN HIS DASNT OPEN

So actually i tried the opposite: disable the feedssync.

So i did C:>msfeedssync disable

And verified C:>reg query HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Feeds /v SyncStatus

Which confirms it to be off

KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Feeds

  SyncStatus  REG_DWORD       0x0

However, after an hour and a half, i am still receiving events....(default schedule is set to 15 minutes)

How long does it take fo the feeds engine to go and have a nap?

(XP Home SP2)

Oops, I just commented about this over on IEBlog.

XP Home SP2 - affected by what appears to be the same issue. I can still update manually, so it's not THAT bad, but still. Everything up to step 2 worked for me, however, I do not appear to have "schtasks" command - I suspect it might be Vista only? Anyway, I looked at my Scheduled tasks control panel applet (folder, actually), and can't see a feed-related entry.

Any additional steps I should take to help you guys debug?

I am still running RC2, but even since I installed it, the .mp3 enclosures on my podcast RSS feeds aren't downloading with the error "(Download error - Blocked file type)" but I see no reason why these would be blocked.  I have tried what was mentioned on the blog but everything still checked out OK.  Thanks for any help.

I block outgoing, if I new what application to allow access for newsfeeds it would make life easier.

Glen, I seem to recall msfeedssync.exe does that for me.

I'm not a Microsoft employee though - no warranties.

As for the Microsoft guys here - have you been able to figure out what's been going on?

platform vista-

I want to find out where are my feeds stored, I deleted them from my outlook/ie but still some of the reappear in outlook engine. I just want a command line interface to removing the unwanted feed subscription or visual one through outlook/ie/simplefolder based design.

Govind, I've had the same problem you've had with Outlook, unfortunately I can't explain how to remove them completely from Outlook, because I think they're embedded in the main database file.

However, I can tell you how to disable them from syncing:

Either go to Tools -> Send/Receive -> Send/Receive Settings -> Define Send/Receive Groups... or just type Ctrl+Alt+S :)

Then hit the Edit button for whichever group you're using (All Accounts is usually the only one), click on the RSS "Account" on the left, and uncheck the "Include RSS Feeds in the Send/Recieve group".

If you're curious about where IE7 keeps the feeds, you can find them here:

For XP:

\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Feeds

For Vista:

\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Feeds

@Govind - Is your Outlook connected to Exchange and do you have other computers with Outlook that might still download RSS?

If that is so, you might want to double check that you have RSS turned off in all Outlook clients.

@Glen, TMaster is correct that msfeedssync.exe runs to download feeds in the background.

@TMaster - In the scheduled tasks control panel you need to enable viewing of hidden tasks. (Advanced | View Hidden Tasks)

Please take a look at %windir%\schedlgu.txt to see what the Results are for User_Feed_... jobs executing.

@DouglasH - Please try to delete the FeedsStore.feedsdb-ms file in %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Feeds

Then manually refresh a feed. Let us know if the feed and folder bolding works again.

@errors - can you also take a look at %windir%\schedlgu.txt to see what the results are for the executions of User_Feed_... jobs?

Thanks for the tip of viewing hidden tasks! I can see it now.

I looked at the .txt file, and no errors were reported as far as I can see - they all had a exit/return code of zero.

Then again, since the start of this log file, I haven't seen any problems yet. This is probably due to my low current uptime, due to Windows updates and such.

Once I notice my feeds are no longer updating, I'll try to remember this topic. Thanks!

Thanks TMaster and Walter, added msfeedssync.exe to outbound firewall rules and my news feed is now updating. It did not work straight away, may have started working after reboot.

Thanks Guys.

I ran into a problem where the feeds were not being updated in Outlook 2007. Using the steps above everything checked out OK, but what was odd is that the feeds were being updated in IE7 but not Outlook.

Poking around I found that I had 120 feeds in IE7 while Outlook only showed 54 under tools - accounts - RSS feeds.

There are two things I have modified with the RSS Feeds in Outlook 2007.

1) I moved checking the RSS Feeds to a seperate Send/Receive group because * COUGH * COUGH * it appeared to be synchronous call and would render Outlook completely unusable while the feeds were being checked.

2) I moved each feed to another folder below RSS Feeds based on the category, and use search folders to display all the feeds from that Folder/Category in one view. So each feed is now located two folders down from RSS Feeds. Ie. RSS Feeds - Category - Feed.

I was actually able to resolve the problem, by going to and clicking on each individual feed folder in the Outlook navigation pane. Checking the count of feeds under the account tab showed 120.

A couple of questions

1) If a feed fails to refresh X number of times, does it get removed from the RSS Feed list in the accounts tab? I am behind a very restrive ISA server at work and wonder if after failing a couple of times it gets automatically (and silently) removed from the list.

2) Is there any log file that I can review to see if there are any feeds that have failed to refresh?

I will subscribe to the comments, but just in case my feeds break again you can ping me using my first name and the domain hai-q.com.

Doug

My feeds are still updating, and it appears the problem no longer occurs. I'm not yet sure, however. I'd only dare to make that statement once I have a uptime of at least two weeks.

However, I did notice something that might've been able to explain the problem. In the past, one of my feeds (http://news.livejournal.com/data/rss) only updated right after visiting LiveJournal itself. I'm guessing this was some kind of cookie/expiration/authentication problem on their side. Ever since THIS feed started working again, I'm no longer seeing the problem. I hope this might point you in the right direction, though.

They stopped updating last night. I can see one error in the log file, but it's not in a user_feed*.job, but in a job that executes mobsync.exe. This isn't too relevant, or is it? I backed up the log file just to be sure.

Apparently, the job file for feed syncing (user_feed_*.job) kept running even after the error occured, but then 2 hours and 36 minutes after the error entry, the job stops running, only giving exit codes of zero and no new errors. Once it stops, it STOPS, so it doesn't even start again without exiting.

I followed the steps mentioned at the top of the page again, but as I said, I do not have the "schtasks" file or command.

I just tried this again, however:

msfeedssync disable

msfeedssync enable

and after waiting a while (for the job to run again), my feeds were updated again.

Hope this info helps!

Another issue might be IE7 not appearing to correctly implement the Syndication extension for both RSS 1.0 and Atom. Instead of dividing the updatePeriod by the updateFrequency IE7 appears to multiple the two values.

So when I looked at a feed which had <sy:updatePeriod>daily</sy:updatePeriod> and   <sy:updateFrequency>2</sy:updateFrequency> specified IE7 stated the default "update schedule" for this subscribed RSS 1.0 feed as 2880 minutes (2 days) instead of 720 minutes (12 hours).

Regarding the instructions at the top of this page,

Check if RSS Download Engine is running

reg query HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Feeds /v SyncStatus

Look at the "Status" line, it should read "0x01". If it isn't enabled, then enable it

msfeedssync enable

When I look at the status line it says "0X1"  

What does that mean?  Also,

msfeedssync disable

msfeedssync enable

does not seem to change the status.

Thanks folks!

Best wishes,

Bill

Hi all,

I thought my feeds were not updating originally, until I realised I had them only updating once a day. I clicked on feed properties on the RSS page in IE to change this.

However something that annoys me about Vista RSS gadget, is that it rotates all the time, I would prefer it just to show the top 10 and have the top 10 fixed, I dont want to see 1-4 then 5-8 then 9-12, as I've probably already read them, just 1-10 and fixed.

Any ideas how to do that?

Sometimes feeds are not updating because  FeedsStore.feedsdb-ms file got corrupted.

In such cases you can try the following:

   1. Close Internet Explorer.

   2. Move FeedsStore.feedsdb-ms file to somewhere else on your local drive.

   3. Back in IE, hit refresh so the file is recreated.

   4. If things start working as expected,  delete the old FeedsStore.feedsdb-ms file.

More clues....

I noticed that my IE7 will not automatically update...even after trying all the items in this blog. However, RSS in Outlook 2007 seems to be updating OK. My IE7 problem started weeks before Office 2007 was installed.. Are they conficting? I don't think they are sharing the same db because I ended up with double entries in Outlook , after trying to deleting and recreating the feeds int IE7.

I have found that the schedule task return error and that results in the feed not updating.

in one case reseting the default task user did the trick in the other case i had to recreate the feed.

I added few feeds to my Outlook 2007 and went to a vacation soon after that. My Outlook was completely disconnected from everything for at least two weeks. After I returned to regular life I realized my feeds are no longer updated. I opened RSS feeds settings (Tools -> Account settings -> RSS Feeds) and found out that all feeds I added before vacation are gone. They are just not in the list of feeds. All feeds I added after vacation are in place.

Do those feeds expire if they are not updated or read in some time? Two weeks, perhaps? How can I disable this behavior if yes?

Best wishes,

Alex

Control Panle -> Scheduled Tasks -> Advanced -> View Hidden Tasks -> double click msfeedsyc.

I found two run times on this, one was for every 5 minutes, one was a one time. I deleted the one-time as it didn't seem to have any effect. The 5 minute task had been set forward to a month in advance, which was caused by my setting the clock forward a while back to test some software. Check your 5 minute start date, make sure it's current.

Also I was able to manually fire up the sync by running:

"C:\WINDOWS\system32\msfeedssync.exe sync"

Hi, you can force a global feeds refresh with a :    msfeedssync forcesync

Bye

Hey, thanks, Jean-Marc! That might make for a cool Quick Launch shortcut.

Yup, the problem is here again. Apparently, Task Scheduler thinks the task is still running - the context menu offers an option to end the task. msfeedssync.exe is NOT in my process list, however. Renaming the FeedsStore.feedsdb-ms does NOT help (I assume there's no need to actually move the file, if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me).

Need more info? Just ask. I'm still subscribed to the comments here, and it's in my benefit to have a fix for this problem, even though I've seen much worse bugs.

I had the same problem as Jim:

Control Panle -> Scheduled Tasks -> Advanced -> View Hidden Tasks -> double click msfeedsyc.

I found two run times on this, one was for every 5 minutes, one was a one time. I deleted the one-time as it didn't seem to have any effect. The 5 minute task had been set forward to a month in advance, which was caused by my setting the clock forward a while back to test some software. Check your 5 minute start date, make sure it's current.

Also I was able to manually fire up the sync by running:

"C:\WINDOWS\system32\msfeedssync.exe sync"

But i went to Control Panle -> Scheduled Tasks -> Advanced -> View Hidden Tasks -> double click msfeedsyc. like he said and i went to {127CC62B-6CF0-41A5-8E17-FE9EEAFE0C84} and changed it from when idle to Daily. then i left {F897AA24-BDC3-11D1-B85B-00C04FB93981} how it was.I left MP Scheduled Scan alone as well then went to User_Feed_Synchronization-{3EE9E509-51C4-40C9-A7CD-ACB246D7C4D2} and went to the Schedule Tab and found two run times on this, So i deleted both because had the year 2011 on them and then added a new one for today and now my Feeds are updating like normal again and it only took like 1 second or less before i noticed that what i did fixed my Feed problem.

I have Windows XP Home Edition SP2 by the way too.

For the record, my start time is in the past, but updates to 15 minutes in the future when I manually refresh all feeds. (And of course I have the other schedule, which runs every 5 minutes as of midnight.

Is Microsoft working on a fix? I'd love to know. By now, a lot of feedback and information has been given. :-)

I am having the RSS sync issue in Outlook 2007. I have tried everything on this page to no avail.

If anyone has any other ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Rob

I'm having the RSS sync issue in Outlook 2007 as well.  I have tried everything too... nothing helps.

"I get these errors:

TaskName                             Next Run Time            Status

==================================== ======================== ===============

User_Feed_Synchronization-{DC1FF25F- 04:10:00, 17/01/2007     Could not start

User_Feed_Synchronization-{DC1FF25F- 04:10:00, 17/01/2007     Could not start "

I also get such errors? What's wrong? Can you help?

Same issue as TMaster, Matt and Jim, with the same symptoms (two schedules, one in the future, both every five minutes, neither seems to do anything).

Anyone from MS care to comment?

I just discovered that this may be related to changing your computer name. See http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2006/06/09/100440.aspx

I haven't gotten a workaround yet, but now that I think about it, I did change my computer name around the time the feeds died for me.

Ok, I really should have just done one post instead of three in the span of 5 minutes, but...

If you change your computer name, feeds updating will die. The cause is the "run as" field in the scheduled process (control panel -> scheduled tasks -> advanced -> view hidden tasks -> User_Feed_Synchronization)

No matter what I do, the run as field seems to want to revert to

old_computer_name\username

Clearly this is no good since my old computer name isn't valid anymore.

If I try to change it to

new_computer_name\username

It reverts to the old name as soon as I press ok or apply.

If anyone finds a fix, please post a comment on this blog.

Ok, seems to be working now. Here's what I did.

On the scheduled task, disable the checkbox "runonly if logged on", this allowed me to type in a password and change the computer name in a way that would stick.

At some point in this, the task scheduler service became disabled. I restarted it as per the instructions at the top.

I double checked the computer name in the scheduled task and it seems to have stuck.

I re-enabled the "runonly if logged on" checkbox.

Seems to work now.

Anyways, the problem seems to be caused by issues with changing your computer name and some inability to change the "run as" field in the scheduled task to reflect the new name.

Oh, and at some point in my ad-hoc procedure, I re-ran msfeedssync disable then msfeedssync enable, around the time that I renable the scheduler service. This seems to be what allowed the changed computer name to stick.

Oh, and if this works for other people, someone owes me a beer.

Sorry, Chris, but it appears my problem has a different cause. The "run as" computer name was already correct, and I don't remember changing it lately. Plus, feed syncing starts working again when I reboot. I'm thinking suspend-to-RAM may also be causing it for me - but I doubt that'd be the only cause of my problem.

Chris's solution worked perfectly for me. I changed my computer name while at school because of their network, and that must have been when it stopped working. I changed the name back to the original and everything is working perfectly again.

Check up with me in about a year for that beer... Or I could always just give you the money now. ;-)

My feeds were not updating & when I tried:

schtasks /query | findstr /i "user_feed"

I got:

User_Feed_Synchronization-{6F501CF9- 08:51:00, 5/30/2007      Could not start

I went to the Scheduler, showed hidden tasks, & it said it was unable to start the User_Feed_Synchronization. I went into the properties & changed the schedule. It prompted me for credentials & then ran properly. Subsequent changes to the schedule did not require me to re-enter credentials, so maybe the task just needed credentials in order to run.

I occasionally have the problem with my feeds not updating. A guaranteed fix for me is to visit the website URL that I am subscribed to in IE7, exit the browser, and outlook 2007 will then refresh the feed and get any posts it should have gotten in recent days.

TMaster had a similar comment earlier in the thread - but no one else has noted the same workaround. please fix this soon MS....

It seems to close INSTANTLY. After I right-click and select refresh all, I see the msfeedssync.exe app run for only a second.

Here's what I'm getting in my task scheduler log:

"User_Feed_Synchronization-{********-****-****-****-************}.job" (msfeedssync.exe)

Finished 6/3/2007 4:55:01 AM

Result: The task completed with an exit code of (1).

Please do help.

Whooohooo! Thanks Chris, I've been puzzling my head for a week now....all's well again...I hope i could buy you that beer...

Thanks Chris, Nice Work.....

http://www.linkdir.co.uk/rss.php?list=latest&start=1&s=P

Thanks Nathanscott,

Just the checkbox i searched for !

The IE7 seems not to update, also does the new XP have a repair program on the disk as I tried to repair some corrupt file and it instantly reinstalls.

Very good . You are doing a great job.

Well, firstly I have no idea if my issue applies. Feeds on my blog http://myonlyphoto.blogspot.com stopped working.

I have a feeling that my blog been marked as potential security risk. This is the message, if anyone tries to run rss feeds for my blog: Internet Explorer cannot display this feed, Internet Explorer does not support feeds with DTDs.

The only possible root cause is probably me the user. That one day, I went into to old posts and tried to fix them up, because of line spacing. And since I could not figure out what was going on, old posts probably been posted many times, as any updated posts will show up on top for rss feed.

If my blog been marked as security risk by Microsoft, can anyone tell me if this can be cleared. I contaced google but so far no reply.

Any help in this matter is appreciated.

Anna :)

Feeds jammed at Sat Sept 1 for MSNBC feeds, did the checklist, checked everything.

Very frustrating, this same stuff has worked forever in firefox.

Just the checkbox i searched for !

I just hope that this will lead to continued developments in RSS.

I am having this problem.  On IE, I see all the feeds with a zillion entries.  In Outlook 2007 I see nothing for quite some time.

I came here, but I"m not sure where I'm supposed to put those actions as described in the original post here.

Please advise.

got this error:

User_Feed_Synchronization-{0578B29E- 09:57:00, 10/12/2007     Could not start

ran these:

msfeedssync disable

msfeedssync enable

then didn't receive an error:

User_Feed_Synchronization-{0578B29E- 09:56:00, 10/12/2007

so hopefully it's ok.

Great help on this.  My feeds quit working after a MS patch.  Now its working fine.

"Check if RSS Download Engine is running

reg query HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Feeds /v SyncStatus

Look at the "Status" line, it should read "0x01" or "0x1". If it isn't enabled, then enable it

msfeedssync enable"

I ran the reg query shown above and it showed "msfeedssync" as "enabled" (0x1).  However, on a whim, I disabled it (msfeedssync disable) then re-enabled it (msfeedssync enable) and now everything is updating fine.  

It appears to be a hang-up somewhere/somehow.

So for those like me that searched forever to find a cure to this disease, mark all feeds as "read" then set the default update time to "15 minutes" and then try the following:

1.  Close any Browser windows.

2.  Click Start > Run then type "cmd" (without quotes) to get the command prompt up.

3.  type "msfeedssync disable" (without quotes)

4.  type "msfeedssync enable" (without quotes)

5.  Close the Command Prompt

Give your feeds plenty of time to update before freaking out and resist the temptation to manually update them to check if its working.

Hopefully it works for you as good as it works for me.  I was having issues and tried everything in the useless Microsoft Help Article first, but just wasted a lot of time.  

Either way, here is the Microsoft Help Article for reference purposes, but I recommend doing the above first as its much quicker:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926447

I'm trying to get my feeds to download from http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510075

I get the following error

Download error - Blocked file type

This is one of many sites I'm trying to get that give me the exact error.

I'm trying all the advices, but it still not work for me. In the "Run as" I find "company name\my name" that is the user I am logged in. If I try anything to change it, I was not able to do.

Could it be that I'm accessing Internet through a firewall?

I had this issue in XP and I tried the above steps, but unfortunately it didn't help.

However, I deleted the feeds folder and now it works properly (I'm sure I could've just deleted the FeedsStore file alone to fix the problem).

Jean-Marc, (if you haven't already figured this out) just go to advanced settings and you'll see an option that says "close unused folders in History and Favorites" (which should really include "Feeds", eh?)

Another issue might be IE7 not appearing to correctly implement the Syndication extension for both RSS 1.0 and Atom. Instead of dividing the updatePeriod by the updateFrequency IE7 appears to multiple the two values.

So when I looked at a feed which had <sy:updatePeriod>daily</sy:updatePeriod> and   <sy:updateFrequency>2</sy:updateFrequency> specified IE7 stated the default "update schedule" for this subscribed RSS 1.0 feed as 2880 minutes (2 days) instead of 720 minutes (12 hours).

Chris's solution worked perfectly for me. I changed my computer name while at school because of their network, and that must have been when it stopped working. I changed the name back to the original and everything is working perfectly again.

Check up with me in about a year for that beer... Or I could always just give you the money now. ;-)

Why is this so difficult to built within the gadget. Is it for Microsoft so logical to put the settings of a news feed in IE to get it work in a gadget?

For so far I know Vista is on the market for almost a year.  

Shouldn't it be fixed by now...??

In IE 7, I found the feeds not updating. Everything checked out, but I found that hovering over a feed in the feed list did not show the last updated time.

So, I started a separate IE 7 window, and the status DID show up for each feed, and it started updating. Now, in the prior IE 7 window, it does show BOLD for all the feeds that were updated, but again, hovering does not show the last updated time.

It seems not showing the status and not doing the update are related. Just starting a new IE 7 window worked. But it's annoying, still.

We recently started having RSS feeds being setup in IE7 but not passing into Outlook 2007 SP1 on XP SP2 machines.  We are also running Exchange 2007 SP1.  This seems to work fine for an admin but anybody with a roaming profile has this issue.

Step 3 fixed the issue. The task image was corrupted.

Why don't the folders close when changing feeds. Shouldn't it be automatic?

I need suggestions on hot to get I/E 7's RSS Feeds to update automatically. I have Windows XP.  The feeds  update when I manually refresh one or all. I checked the properties/settings ( all are set for auto update and match are are in line with the properties of each particular feed . I  exported/imported the feeds and still no auto updates. My Feeds in Google Reader and NewsGator Online all update automatically. Thank you.

Here's the reason my feeds stopped updating: I had accidentally set my system date ahead a month (meant to change the hour for DST) so a bunch of feeds were marked with the incorrect date.

Brian

If my blog been marked as security risk by Microsoft, can anyone tell me if this can be cleared??

Rc2 refresh seems to break sync'ing after a resume..

This is probably not the right place to post this, but I've searched the net for a couple hours and haven't seen anything like the problem I'm having with the Feed Headlines Sidebar Gadget.  The fly-out isn't working properly most of the time when the Gadget is docked. I can click to make the fly-out actuate, but the headline link isn't "clickable" and the scrollbars are frozen.  I can tell if a fly-out is locked up like this by the color: if it's sort of a blueish / gray background, it's frozen; if it's a white background, good to go.  Very aggravating.  Sometimes the Gadget will start working properly if I drag it onto the Desktop,the push it back into the Sidebar.  More often than not, it will start flaking out again.  I have uninstalled / reinstalled the Gadget.  I have deleted if from the  Gallery, then reinstalled using the "Restore gadgets installed with Windows" button on the Sidebar Properties dialog.  No joy.  Help!

Excellent!  #1 and #2 was working, but I had to perform #3 - and now it works.

Thanks for nice post.

Great help on this.  My feeds quit working after a MS patch.  Now its working fine.

I am very thankful of reading this text but for me this code is little difficuld

Same problem. msfeedssync disable /enable worked. BUT. I also get "task image corrupt or has been tampered with" errors for reminders.<username>.

schtasks /query | findstr /i "user_reminders"

returns

ERROR: The task image is corrupt or has been tampered with.

So what string do I prepend to disable to fix it?