Outkook Express sending failure 1

[pilihp]

Outlook Express 6 with XP SP2

A friend has a simple dialup account. Compose a new email, Send it to the Outbox then send/receive - the email is sent but the recipient doesn't get it. Looking at the servers mailboxes on the web, the email appears in the SPAM box and is addressed back to my friend, the Sender, as diplayed in the header! - whatever is going on ? There are no error messages at any point and the Sent Items folder in OE confirms that the message was sent.
There is no problem whatever in receiving email.

I have set up the same dialup account on my own computer and sent emails in my friends name using OE without any problem, so I conclude that my friend's OE has gone wrong.
Does anyone have an idea how to tackle this problem?

All the account settings in OE are correct and setting up a new account does not change the situation.

 

[smah]

Does the behavior occur when sending to an entirely new address? (Set up a new hotmail, gmail, yahoo or whatever to test). Manually type this 'new' recipient address in the address field. I'm wondering if the address book or autocompletion info is somehow corrupt.

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Steve
Small Business Support in the Connecticut River Valley of VT and NH
faq219-2884
MS Knowledgebase version: How to Ask

 

[pilihp]

smah - many thanks; I think you are onto something. I have just got my friend to send me an email using an address they haven't used before - and it works!
So does this mean something is corrupted? I should tell you that the PSU on the laptop went wrong immediately before the problem arose. Dell replaced it; maybe this is the cause. What do you suggest can be done without resorting to reloading windows?

 

[smah]

Move or rename the existing address book & let windows create a new one. The old one could still be opened if needed later. The windows address book will be stored in something like username.wab. When searching, you'll need to include hidden files in the search. Rename it to something like username_damaged.wab

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Steve
Small Business Support in the Connecticut River Valley of VT and NH
faq219-2884
MS Knowledgebase version: How to Ask

 

[pilihp]

The laptop owner is not computer literate and it may be very difficult to instruct them to delete the address book over the phone, but I will try.
Do you think that doing this will mean that existing emails can be replied to in the normal way or could there be some corruption there too?

 

[smah]

As a first step, I suppose that you could have the user turn autocomplete off, close OE, open OE, turn autocomplete back on, then test again. I wouldn't hold my breath for this to work, but it would be easy enough to try.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/web/autocomplete.mspx

Although probably not caused by the security update mentioned in this article, I think that you have a similar situation. The escence of the solution in this article is essentially what I was proposing above. Resolution steps 2-8 will probably be reqiured to 'fix' the problem. If you're comfortable doing it, you could have the user send you a remote assistance request.

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Steve
Small Business Support in the Connecticut River Valley of VT and NH
faq219-2884
MS Knowledgebase version: How to Ask

 

[pilihp]

Thank you very much for these suggestions. The address book might as well be deletd alltogether anyway. It wouldn't be much hardship to build it up again. In fact each entry could be deleted one by one; this would be much easier for the user to do.

I gather from reading the article and from what you have already told me that the autocomplete function works in conjunction with the address book entries - but what about when one replies to an email? - the address book isn't being used then is it? and if that is true then corruption in the address book shouldn't matter whether autocomplete is turned on or off - maybe I'm being too simplistic.

Certainly the MS article implies that address book corruption does leads to trouble in replying to emails.

I shall report back after trying your suggestions.

 

[pilihp]

smah - It works! It was too much for the user to find & delete the wab folder but I deletd each entry in turn and also turned OFF autocomplete.
Now when existing email are replied to the reply is sent without any problem and arrive at their destinations.
I'm so grateful for your help and advice
Very many thanks,
pilihp

 

[smah]

That's good news. Glad you got it resolved.

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Steve
Small Business Support in the Connecticut River Valley of VT and NH
faq219-2884
MS Knowledgebase version: How to Ask