Outlook 2003 and ATT DSL

[carguy1]

Since day 1 with ATT DSL I've had problems with intermittant email and ATT seems to be of no help. They get to a point and then tell me it's Microsoft's issue which I don't believe.

Here's the problem: When doing the send/receive function automatically, it often (but not all the time) will ask for the network password. If I don't hit the return key in 30 seconds the send/receive times out. Other times, during the send/receive, it just kind of hangs up at the 50% mark and doesn't complete the send/receive task. I have 3 email accounts configured.

My suspicion is that it is at worst, a hardware issue on their end but more likely some kind of setup issue on this end that nobody has told me about. I've followed all their information with the latest server addresses and port numbers.

Anyone have this issue or have any advice? This never happened with my previous ISP.

 

[vcsinfo]

Working from home? Using vpn?

 

[carguy1]

Yes I work from home. It's a DSL connection. No VPN.

 

[58sniper]

Connecting to an ATT mail server, or to a remote server over ATT connection?

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP

 

[carguy1]

...it is connecting to the ATT-SBCGLOBAL-YAHOO server over the DSL line using POP3/SMTP protocols and setup. No IMAP or VPN, or anything like that.

When you actually get someone speaking English at their tech support the "fix" is to use their webmail. Or to stop using a firewall, or stop using security software. I use off the shelf McAfee and a DLING Router. All commmon stuff.

Outlook, using POP3 and SMTP configurations; McAfee and Dlink is NOTHING strange and should be configurable to use reliably and consistently.

 

[jakechaffee]

Is the McAfee product you're using just an anti-virus or is it the full suite with firewall and everything?

If it is the full suite you may have to go into the configuration of the firewall and look around for port rules because it may be blocking that. McAfee's firewall comes locked down really tight and i sometimes wonder how the average user may know how to work around issues it may cause on a standard home network.



There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who can read binary and those who can't.

 

[carguy1]

The McAfee is the full suite. I don't know where to begin looking at that, there does not appear to be a lot of user settings. Maybe they are hidden. The problem I think is with multiple email accounts--it's almost as if the email servers don't like to be polled too quickly. I have 3 email accounts set up, and when Outlook does a send/receive, it does them all in quick step one after the other. MOST times the first email in sequence works fine, it is the second and third ones that it hangs up on.

The error message is that Outlook timed out waiting for a response from the POP3 server.

Then the related issue is that it often, not all the time, asks for the network password in the middle of this checking the email. The network passwords are already configured in Outlook and indeed, come up on this screen already filled in. If I'm at the computer and I hit return, it accepts the network user name/password combination showing and continues. If I'm not, of course, it simply times out when I do return.