In case of trouble you may need to re-configure your email account from scratch. Click Here to see how to do this.

Email problems with broadband: If you cannot send or receive emails your anti-virus program may be set to scan emails using a dial-up setting. You need to tell it to use the broadband setting. For instance, AVG must be set to use the LAN or broadband setting. Double click the AVG icon on the Desktop. Click Control Center. Click Email Scanner (you may have to move down using the arrow key). Click the Properties button, then click the next Properties button. Click Edit and select the appropriate method, this is usually LAN for broadband.

UNABLE TO RECEIVE EMAILS

Unable to receive emails? But you are able to to send emails. it may be that some inconsiderate person has sent you an enormous photograph (say 3.5MB) which could take about 20 minutes to download using a dial-up connection. In Outlook Express you can restrict incoming emails so that big ones are blocked. Tell the computer not to download anything over a certain size as follows:-
Open Outlook Express, click Tools, click Message Rules--> Mail-->New
In the top pane scroll down to find and tick the box labelled Where the message size is more than sizeIn the 2nd pane, scroll down to the box labelled Do not download it from server and tick it.
In the 3rd pane click the blue underlined word. A dialogue box will pop up. In the top field type the figure 100 and click OK, then click the next OK.
Now any email over 100Kb (Kilobytes) will never be downloaded, and your incoming flow of emails will be un-blocked. A typical email with an attachment would rarely exceed 5Kb. If you need to download a bigger file you could safely increase the figure to about 500Kb which would take about 2.5 minutes to download. Be considerate when you send a photograph by email, crop it and compress it (click Here to see how to compress a picture for sending by email).

Server unable to download emails. On rare occasions an email may be corrupted at the ISP end of the process. An error message pops up usually containing the code 0x800CC93. Note the date and time of the last email you were able to receive. Then access the ISP's website and log in to your webmail account. Look for the message that has a date and time just after the one you noted. Delete that message.

Emails print in huge font:  The header of the printed email is normal size but the body of the emails is not. To cure this, close Outlook Express and open up Internet Explorer. Click View-->Text Size and choose Medium. Close down Internet Explorer and try printing that email again.

Email font too small: First make sure the Internet Explorer settings are set to Medium as in the previous paragraph. Now open Outlook Express and click Tools-->Options and click the Compose tab. On the right of the top field you will see a button labelled Font Settings. Click it and set the font to Arial, Regular and 11 point. Click Apply then click OK.

Try this website for email trouble shooting tips and email tutorials: www.steve.maurer.net

Service Pack 2 for Windows XP:
In August 2004, Service Pack 2 was released with a great deal of publicity. Strangely some people missed it or ignored it. To protect your computer this pack was essential. If you see a blue caterpillar at start up you have SP2 installed. If you have a green caterpillar you can be sure of a load of trouble with viruses, worms and trojans and you may not be able to access your internet or emails.

Vanished email: So you just typed an email and it suddenly vanished, or it popped into the Drafts folder. This is common on a laptop because you can accidentally brush against the touch pad. If the email vanished completely, you will probably find it minimised on the task bar at the bottom of the screen; just click it. If it is in the Drafts folder, click the Drafts folder and then open the email. Click Send and it will go into the Outbox.

UNABLE TO SEND EMAILS

Can't send emails but you can receive emails
(1): If you see an error message saying 'An unknown error has occurred... blacklisted file extension detected'. It means you are trying to send an email containing an illegal attachment. The Server has rejected it with a Response 550.
In Outlook Express, click on the Outbox and either delete the email with the attachment or drag it across and drop it on the Drafts folder to be dealt with later. Your other emails will no longer be blocked by the offending email. ISP's are very careful not to allow illegal attachments to be circulated. An illegal attachment might be one with the suffix  '.lnk' which could be used to spread a virus.

Can't send emails (2): If you see an error message saying 'An unknown error has occurred...' and the email has been rejected by the server with response 550, something in the email or its attachment cannot be accepted by the server. Follow the same procedure as above to remove the email from the Outbox so that you can send other your emails.

Can't send emails (3): If an error message indicates that there is an smtp authentication fault, try this In Outlook Express, click Tools-->Accounts. Click your account so that it turns blue. Click the Properties button. Click the Servers tab. In the bottom section of the window tick the box  labelled My Server requires authentication.

Can't send emails (4): Server unexpectedly terminated and error message 451. An email you are trying to send is disliked by your ISP. In Outlook Express, click on the Outbox and either delete the email with the attachment or drag it across and drop it on the Drafts folder to be dealt with later. This error is usually due to an email with bare line feeds. See http://pobox.com/~djb/docs/smtplf.html

 Email photo resizing vanished? The pop-up re-sizer dialog box fails to show up when you want to compress a photo for emailing. This can happen  for one of two reasons:-
(1) Most frequently this is due to loading a new photo editing program that has changed the file association for photos. To correct this, click Start-->Run then type regsvr shimgvw.dll and click OK. Note the single space after regsvr. To make the change effective you must then Restart the computer, Start-->Turn off computer-->Restart.
(2) The vital Windows file sendmail.dll may have been corrupted due to a power cut or due to switching off the computer incorrectly. To repair the file, double click My Computer on the Desktop (or single click it in the Start menu). Then double click the main hard disk (usually Local disk C:). Double click the Windows folder.  Scroll down and double click the System32 folder. For safety's sake you should now put the corrupt file in a safe place; create a new folder called Old files. Click File in the top menu bar and click New then Folder. Type the new folder name and press Enter. Drag and drop the corrupt sendmail.dll file into the Old File folder.
Windows will replace the missing file and you should now see the re-sizing dialog box when you want to send a photo by email.

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