Enter Network Password Issue

[Joe McGuire]

I am using OL 2003 SP 3 with XP and for the past few days I keep getting
bugged by that "known issue" of the Enter Network Password window. The
error message disinegenuously seems to blame this on my ISP, here Comcast.
The ISP insists everything is working fine--and except for this annoying
window--it is. But nothing I can think of fixes the problem. The KB
articles suggest a patch which apparently is not available, and then only
for the exact problem it describes. Deleting my OL e-mail account and then
recreating it makes no difference. Any suggestions? Can I uninstall SP3?

 

[Joe McGuire]

Just a few minutes after my post I now have 2 similar error messages. One
demands I type my user name and p/w for the server "smpt.comcast.net" (the
outgoing mail server) and another referring to the incoming server
"mail.comcast.net". The "smtp" error message will not go away, even
briefly. The other seems to go away for a while.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

I am using OL 2003 SP 3 with XP and for the past few days I keep getting
bugged by that "known issue" of the Enter Network Password window. The
error message disinegenuously seems to blame this on my ISP, here Comcast.
The ISP insists everything is working fine--and except for this annoying
window--it is. But nothing I can think of fixes the problem. The KB
articles suggest a patch which apparently is not available, and then only
for the exact problem it describes. Deleting my OL e-mail account and
then recreating it makes no difference. Any suggestions? Can I uninstall
SP3?

Have you seen this? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290684/en-us

 

[Joe McGuire]

I had not seen this. Wow, 8 printed pages of fixes. This will take some
time.

 

[Joe McGuire]

A bust so far. Well, half bust. Followed the KB steps to create a new
profile and also followed the other KB article (829918) to create a new
e-mail profile. Outlook is running again--but with only my archive pst
file.. Can't seem to get it to link up with the right .pst file for current
mail. And I keep getting the Enter Network Password Message.

 

[Joe McGuire]

Finally got OL working with my e-mail and the archive pst files. But I
can't send or receive any mail because OL insists it can't find the
(incorrect) pst file. The only way I found to prevent OK from using that
wrong file was to rename it. Somehow OL is now using the correct pst file
at least to show me my e-mail as of yesterday--when I got so sick of the
Network Password harassment I stopped using OL. But should I pretend OL
works and go on to the other suggestions in the KB paper, including
operating in Safe mode and playing around with the registry?

Obviously some important stuff is missing from the KB articles.

 

[Joe McGuire]

After getting my e-mail through Outlook Express and finding that there was
some inexplicable problem with my ISP password all seems to be working fine.
Seems I had to reset the password I have been using for, well, a long time.
Was I using the wrong one all this time? Doesn't seem likely. Maybe they
did something subtle that created the oproblem. Maybe the annoying error
message--Enter Network Password--was trying to tell me my p/w was no longer
working. Maybe there was no OL problem at all, just the usual opacity of
error messages.