Help "unjamming" Email... please, please...

[pc]

Hi,
I no longer have active websites at FQ but I do have two parked domains here. That entitles me to email service but no CNC, ftp, etc... which is fine. I appreciate the email.

I could really use some help with my problem quickly, if possible. On one of the domains, I use that email for Ebay auction mail. I have been out of town since Sunday morning and had quite a few auctions that closed that night. Well, when I try to check my email, it shows 32 messages to be received. The first message comes in, then it just stops and times out. The other domains email that I have parked here is working just fine so I don't feel like this is a misconfiguration (I haven't messed with the settings) of Outlook Express. It's like the second message is jamming the whole thing up.

I don't know what has happened but I need to get these messages ASAP. I need to find out what correspondance I've received from auction winners, as they probably think I am ignoring them. All of the other email accounts are working fine from various servers except this one.

Anyone have any ideas of how I can "unjam" this mailbox? I have no ideas and although I've emailed tech support, they have said this would have to be passed on to the system administrator and like I said, I need these messages ASAP.

Any help would be appreciated!

Phyllis

[Terra]

After assisting via phone call interaction, there is now more substantiation as to what the problem is...

This is the 3rd incident of Microsoft Outlook 5.5 and Norton AntiVirus causing either:
a) GPF
or
b) Download appears to hang

I do not yet know why this combination is causing mail retrieval problems...[nbsp][nbsp]However, in running manual tests to the POP server and sending RFC POP compliant commands, I cannot find any problems whatsoever...

This is now turning into an EMail client + NAV issue for which we do not have a resolve yet...

From a server standpoint, there is not much I can do to fix this as our POP server is 100% RFC compliant...[nbsp][nbsp]Any deviation from that compliance becomes the programmers bad judgment...

If anyone knows of any further information concerning this combination, and any steps taken to resolve the retrieval problems - please post them here...

Thanks...

--
Terra
--How hard can it be to master the verbs: quit,stat,list,uidl,dele,retr,rset,last,top,noop (???)--
FutureQuest

[Arthur]

I have seen the problem before. It was also a combination of Outlook (Express) and Qmail POP3, coincidence or not? Telnetting to POP3 and removing the first email by hand seemed to 'unjam' the mailbox and 'solve' the problem (at least for the user).
It's of course not a real solution to the problem, I don't know what's the cause.

--
Arthur

[Terra]

Arthur, it appears that you have a firm grasp on manual POP procedures...

Does Outlook have a debug logging feature, like Eudora, that shows the actual POP conversation?

If so, can you turn that on the next time you get snagged by a hang...[nbsp][nbsp]Then send in the POP conversation log of both before and after that email was cleared by hand...[nbsp][nbsp]This might give me a hint as to a potential workaround for the Outlook problem...

On another note, I have searched the newsgroups and mailing lists for QMail, and there is a unanimous conclusion that Outlook does things it's own way and can get tripped up on the simplist of emails...

The general profiles for disaster are:
1) Emails that have lone dots on a line with either content following, line feeds, or more lone dots...
e.g.:
.
text
or
.
.
or
.

.

b) Emails with odd characters in them
c) Emails with attachments - most highly reported of breaking are Excel attachments...

The final summation for QMail admins around the world is that this is a MicroSoft issue...[nbsp][nbsp]Outlook does not even properly interoperate with their own flagship Exchange product...[nbsp][nbsp]All attempts to solve the issue, only created new problems for Outlook...

I will do further, and more in-depth research/testing - however, I will not fall into the syndrome of "Fix one thing/Break Another"...[nbsp][nbsp]If Outlook itself is buggy, then the choice to live with those bugs is the user's decision, if they are unwilling to switch to another email client like Eudora, Pegasus, The Bat, etc...[nbsp][nbsp]For myself, Eudora manages over 5 Gigs of email without breaking a sweat and downloads _thousands_ of new messages a day from our servers and filters/files them accordingly...

<rant>
To be honest, I have so many **ugly** kludges in the server to interoperate with MicroSoft's shortcomings, (SSL handshaking and IRM image caching immediately comes to mind)...[nbsp][nbsp]This alone would not be a problem, except for every time I report a confirmed and proven glitch - they just blow me off and tell me to upgrade...
*) I try to tell them I don't use their b0rked Outlook, but rather Eudora, then they say well this is a Eudora problem them and they don't support that -click-...
*) I call them back and tell them I am a Web Host trying to solve a clients issue, they tell me to tell them to upgrade -click-...
*) I call back and tell them that upgrading didn't fix the problem, they tell me it will be fixed in the next release -click-...
*%#$$#$%#@) Grrrrrr!
</rant>

In conclusion: I am still open to workaround ideas, if anyone should know of any...
My interest is in either:
a) low level protocol solutions
or
b) inlined filtering solutions: e.g. s/^\.$/\.\.\./; (etc.)

--
Terra
--I fix many things, but there are some things that just cannot be done without MicroSoft's cooperation--
FutureQuest

[Arthur]

I myself haven't experienced any problems with FQ's POP server (I too use Eudora), the case I referred to was with an ISP I've worked for.
In Outlook Express (5.5) there is an option to log all commands to and from the server. It's under Options -> Maintenance -> Problem solving (I have a Dutch version, so the names may be slightly different).
I haven't found such a thing in the full version of Outlook yet.

--
Arthur

Add.; I just sent myself an email with an Excel file attached to it and then checked the log file Outlook Express created. There doesn't seem anything out of the ordinary with how Outlook talks to the server (USER, PASS, STAT, LIST, UIDL 1, UIDL, DELE 1, QUIT). It must be the parser in Outlook that's flawed.

[This message has been edited by arthur (edited 01-24-01@08:18 am)]