email troubles

[Target]

hoping someone here may be able to assist with an issue we've just started experiencing at home

intermittent emails are 'hanging' the receive process, ie when an offending email is encountered the process hangs and we cannot download any further messages.

Happens on both PC's at our house (XP SP3 with outlook express, and Vista with windows mail, and now Live Mail).

Stopping and restarting has no effect.

Messages are accessible via webmail, but there is nothing untoward in them that I can see.

None of the messages are large (we're stuck with dialup so anything much more than a meg gets deleted out of hand), and there does not appear to be any consistency between the offenders - the senders, sizes, etc all vary (in fact we received one message from a particular sender fine, but the next one - 24hrs later - failed)

I've checked all the settings (nothing has been changed) and as far as I can see everything should be fine. Beyond this I have no idea how to even begin troubleshooting this

Any ideas?

[ewemoa]

If there is no SSL involved, perhaps you might get some further details by running the likes of Wireshark or SmartSniff to capture the network traffic for closer inspection.

[Ath]

You could contact your ISP and explain your problem? Can be a network issue on their side.

[Curt]

I would first quickly see if it is the AntiVirus causing the problems: First check the mails ready at the ISP server, to estimate if they are clean, then close the AV, maybe restart the email client, and then hit send/receive.

[Target]

I would first quickly see if it is the AntiVirus causing the problems: First check the mails ready at the ISP server, to estimate if they are clean, then close the AV, maybe restart the email client, and then hit send/receive.

already tried this, no luck (thanks for the suggestion though)

[Renegade]

Having suffered many different email problems over the years, I may be able to help.

Is your email server your own? Which server? An ISP email? (Run away!) Popular web mail?

I've seen some of those issues in the past.

[Target]

Having suffered many different email problems over the years, I may be able to help.

Is your email server your own? Which server? An ISP email? (Run away!) Popular web mail?

I've seen some of those issues in the past.

it's the ISP email (BigPond) - our requirements are very light so no need for a personal domain or any such

email is plain vanilla - POP/SMTP, no encryption etc.

Both machines are standalone (no need for a network) and run AVG 2011 (in case that rings any bells - though fwiw I've already tried resetting to the defaults AND disabling the AV, neither of which had any impact).

[Carol Haynes]

They won't agree with you but I would guess the problem is at the ISP end.

I used to have almost the exact same problem with Yahoo - but not with any other providers (including Google and my own servers). Given that the settings were unchanged and setting up the account again from scratch made no difference the problem must have come from Yahoo's servers - my ISP use Yahoo to provide email services but they simply refused to believe that there could be an issue. Same happened for a period when I (and loads of other users) kept getting issued 'dead' IP addresses and the solution was to disconnect the router and reconnect until you got an IP that worked. They also insisted it wasn't at their end.

Most recently my ISP disconnects me at about 10 minutes past midnight on a fairly regular basis. There are no 'lock out' periods in the router and the Internet signal goes off line for a minute or so. Again they refuse to discuss the idea it might be a problem of their making.

ISPs are a law unto themselves!

Probably your best solution is to try using webmail for a while and read/delete all unnecessary email before trying to POP the important stuff. Is there the option to auto-forward to another account in the webmail? If there is you could set up a free account and forward email to that account and pick up from there instead.

If that doesn't work set up a GMAIL account and add your pop account in there to collect emails into the GMAIL account, you can then POP the GMAIL account into your mail client - you would at least see if GMAIL has problems popping the account too or if it is your computer.

[Target]

Much as I hate to rely on a cloud based service GMail may be the ultimate fix - given that it's unlikely that I'll get much assistance from the ISP and the fact that it's so intermittent it may not be worth trying to troubleshoot it (plus it insulates us from future ISP changes)

[skwire]

Much as I hate to rely on a cloud based service GMail may be the ultimate fix - given that it's unlikely that I'll get much assistance from the ISP and the fact that it's so intermittent it may not be worth trying to troubleshoot it (plus it insulates us from future ISP changes)

With my GMail accounts, I never use the web interface.  I use them via IMAP within my email client of choice, Becky.  I periodically back up the GMail accounts with IMAPSize.

[40hz]

I used to occasionally encounter that if the email had an attachment. Usually it was a PDF that was causing the problem although I also saw it happen with GIFs. Probably something in the attachment process caused a malformation of the email which resulted in an inbox hang in my mail client. Saw it happen mostly when using Thunderbird, although I had clients run into it with MS Outlook as well.

If I recall correctly, this only happened with messages originating from an AOL account.

I never got to the bottom of exactly what caused this hassle. After a time it went away by itself. It's only every so often it crops up then disappears again. Most times it's only for a day or two when it does. Which makes me believe it's definitely something on some ISP's server.

Don't know if any of this helps.

[Stoic Joker]

If I recall correctly, this only happened with messages originating from an AOL account.

Gotta love those nested headers, Clicking open attachment over and over for each time its been forwarded (usually about 50) ... Kinda hard to believe a mess like that can manage to not be corrupt really.

Sorry if you were trying to be kind about that little detail, but it's a pet peeve of mine.

[Target]

I used to occasionally encounter that if the email had an attachment. Usually it was a PDF that was causing the problem although I also saw it happen with GIFs. Probably something in the attachment process caused a malformation of the email which resulted in an inbox hang in my mail client. Saw it happen mostly when using Thunderbird, although I had clients run into it with MS Outlook as well.

If I recall correctly, this only happened with messages originating from an AOL account.

interesting to note that your initial experience was with an email containing a PDF - this mirrors our experience where the first instance was a PDF search document from the Main Roads department which we couldn't download no way no how.  Subsequent instances haven't included attachments, though they have included images...

AOL is unlikely to be a factor here in Australia though...

[40hz]

If I recall correctly, this only happened with messages originating from an AOL account.

Gotta love those nested headers, Clicking open attachment over and over for each time its been forwarded (usually about 50) ... Kinda hard to believe a mess like that can manage to not be corrupt really.

Sorry if you were trying to be kind about that little detail, but it's a pet peeve of mine.

I hear ya! Let that knock fall where it will.