Right, here's one I could do with some help on.

My partners father died last week, and now his email won't send. Her mother's been using it to sort arrangements and inform some of his business contacts etc. The account receives email but cannot send; it just sits in the Outbox of Outlook Express.

Now I'll be tasked with resolving this issue when I go tomorrow.

So, things I know:

Outlook Express

Email account is <name>@<blah>.demon.co.uk
(However there is also a blueyonder account listed in the Accounts list in Outlook)

They haven't changed any settings (I got her to check the outgoing SMTP settings that were listed on Demon's website).

I don't know/they don't know who their ISP is. I suspect Virgin as they have TV package and I seem to remember the computer having Virgin anti-virus on it last time I visited.

The errors are:

"Your SMTP server has not responded in 60 seconds. Would you like to wait another 60 seconds for the server to respond?

Account: pop3.demon.co.uk
Server: post.demon.co.uk"

If I select 'Wait' then 60secs later I get the same message. If I select 'Stop' I ultimately receive the following error:

"A time-out occurred while communicating with the server. Account: 'pop3.demon.co.uk', Server: 'post.demon.co.uk', Protocol: SMTP, Port: 465, Secure(SSL): No, Error Number: 0x800CCC19"

Could an automatic anti-virus update have stopped this working? They won't have updated anything knowingly.

Any other ideas on what the check?

I've emailed Demon already but they just said check settings and check firewall/AV settings.

Thanks

How about setting her up with a google mail account, copying the contacts over and using that?

Something doesn't quite feel right about sending emails from the addy of someone who is dead 🙁

If she's connected with Virgin then you won't be able to use Demons SMTP you need to use Virgins.

Run this and it will tell you who her provider is and then find the details for the SMPT from the providers site.

http://www.speedtest.net/

Cheers, in the long term her mother will be setup with a new account of her own. In the immediate aftermath it was easier for her to carry on using what she's familiar with rather than worrying about learning new email skills.

Drac – they've obviously been using Demons SMTP though. They won't have changed anything. I'll use that link to find out the details of their ISP though.

Yeah re-read you post and seen that nothing had changed, worth checking though as if you use the ISP it should be at least a work around. Unless it's demon. 😛

In the immediate aftermath it was easier for her to carry on using what she's familiar with rather than worrying about learning new email skills.

She doesn't need any new skills. Just switch Outlook Express to use the GMAIL account.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=76147

Good luck with it anyway.

Doesn't need to switch either just change the name of the sender.

Cheers guys, I'll set that up for her.

Still confused why the other one has stopped working though.

Usually, the SMTP is the ISP's server, Virgin in this case. You can use the mail host's server instead, but you will need to authenticate and / or use a secure connection to this server for anti-spam reasons, which you can see in this case is exactly what's happening (cos it's using SSL over port 465).

I'd wager the cause is one of two things; either it's exactly as you guessed, that the antivirus is blocking it (either accidentally or because it's infected), or Outlook Express' database is corrupt.

The former should be fairly easy to diagnose – temporarily switch off email scanning.

If it's the latter, read through this to familiarise yourself with OE's database structure. Closing OE and renaming pop3uidl.dbx might well fix it.

Cheers Cougar. I'll have a look at the AV first.

Currently the account is confirgured as per:
http://knowledgebase.demon.net/article/smtp-mail-authentication-for-home-broadband-customers.html

Well, no, it's not.

It's currently set to use SSL, whereas the settings provided on that web page have SSL disabled (ie, port is 25 rather than 465).