Hmmm...odd POP3 connection problem...

Wertz

Yes I know POP3 sucks, before anyone decides to post that...

Anyways, opened OE this afternoon to check mail...I connect to eircom, o2 and IOL respective mail servers, but each connection fails. This was roughly around the same time that boards went down this afternoon.

I've tried rebooting the router, made sure no settings have changed in OE and have tried just restarting the client but no joy.
I've logged into each server via the web and accessed my inboxes that way but I just plain don't like webmail.

Anyone got any idea what's going on? FYI I'm connecting from a BT ADSL connection and never usually have problems....I can understand one server being down, but all three?
All help and suggestions welcomed as ever...

Wertz

The connection to the server has failed. Account: 'gpo.iol.ie', Server: 'gpo.iol.ie', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10061, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E

The connection to the server has failed. Account: 'mail1.eircom.net', Server: 'mail1.eircom.net', Protocol: SMTP, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10061, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E

The connection to the server has failed. Account: 'mail1.eircom.net', Server: 'mail1.eircom.net', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10061, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E

The connection to the server has failed. Account: 'pop3.o2.ie', Server: 'pop3.o2.ie', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10061, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E


Alright there's the above log of me trying to connect to d/l mail and send a mail on my eircom account. I've power cycled the router (netgear dg834g) and made sure the relevant ports aren't blocked, have no s/w firewall on the PC and all my net connections and even bittorrent are running flwalessly.


This has to be at the server end right? But how could 3 different severs be down at the same time. I'm all out of ideas here...

irlrobins

any anti virus installed? Norton prehaps?

Mr. Presentable

Try pinging the mail servers.

Ruu_Old

would your firewall be blocking access to the servers for some reason?

Wertz

Yeah norton net security suite, but firewall is OFF, and as I mentioned I checked that all relevant ports are opened on the router. XP's firewall is also disabled...

Do I need to have the actual IP addresses of the servers I'm trying to ping or will the name do (ie mail1.eircom.net) ?

[edit] Apparently not. All pings came back with no dropped packets or anything else astray....the only other thing I can think of is my log-in info is corrupt...I'll check that now.

[edit2] Nope...all is right in those settings as well. WTF?

Mr. Presentable

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q191687

All other things being correct, it looks from this like a service not running issue

Wertz

Aye shoudl have thought to enter the error code into google but I was sure this was a wider issue.

I'm going to try a system restore and see if whatever's been messed up will right itself.

Wertz

Yeah that seems to have righted the wrong...I've still no clue how a service could have been turned off or deleted. No virus, no spyware no-one else messing with my settings....very odd.

Oh and just for a bit of lightheartedness....I got this error message from the test mail I was attmpting to send myself;

The message could not be sent because one of the recipients was rejected by the server. The rejected e-mail address was '********@iol.ie'. Subject 'bah', Account: 'mail1.eircom.net', Server: 'mail1.eircom.net', Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: '553 sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts (#5.7.1)', Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 553, Error Number: 0x800CCC79

WTH?...I can't send a mail to my iol.ie address from an eircom.net address?
Is this like some sort of dispute between eircom and BT? F*ck me...

BobTheBeat

For face value it does look like a block on the receiving domain,but I dont think it is. Saw a similar problem not so long ago, and the mail address (domain portion) of the recipient was actually incorrect. Have a looke at that!