Entourage 'freezing' when attempting to access inbound mail server

[billd]

I am on an Intel Mac running Office 2004 with Entourage v.11.3.6.

I'm having difficulties receiving email. I can send outbound email
without any problem.

I've checked and re-checked the inbound mail server's information and
log-in (I use SpamArrest as an external server and it's been working
fine on the same settings for almost two years now).

The problem starts once I hit 'Send and Receive'. Then the little
pinwheel starts spinning and Entourage 'freezes'. The only way to
stop the 'freeze' is to 'force quit' Entourage. If the server's
address / login was incorrect I would expect more of an error message
than a complete 'freezing' of the application.

Does anyone have any ideas about why this may be happening or, more
importantly, how to address it effectively?

Thank you.

Bill

 

[Diane Ross]

I'm having difficulties receiving email. I can send outbound email
without any problem.

Basics for Send & Receive:

1. If you can receive but not send then you have a bad SMTP configuration
2. If you can send but not receive you have a bad POP or IMAP configuration

You can try re-entering info.
You can delete account and create a new one.
Using copy/paste can result in an extra space being added. Type carefully.
Check your Keychain for corruption.

I've checked and re-checked the inbound mail server's information and
log-in (I use SpamArrest as an external server and it's been working
fine on the same settings for almost two years now).

The problem starts once I hit 'Send and Receive'. Then the little
pinwheel starts spinning and Entourage 'freezes'. The only way to
stop the 'freeze' is to 'force quit' Entourage. If the server's
address / login was incorrect I would expect more of an error message
than a complete 'freezing' of the application.

Most likely it's a corrupt message. Go to your web browser and login to your
mail account. Usually, it's one of the older messages and it's usually spam.
Delete the message from the web browser.

Does anyone have any ideas about why this may be happening or, more
importantly, how to address it effectively?

Monitor the traffic between Entourage and your ISP to see what is failing.
Sometimes you can identify exactly which message is causing the problem.

Test your network with tcpflow. See directions here:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/tcpflow.html>

Another application I ran into recently that does the same thing but has a
different interface. Seems to be easier to use than tcpflow for many users.

EavesDrop....Let it capture some stuff then double-click any of the lines of
text in the main window to see more detail.

<http://www.baurhome.net/software/eavesdrop/index.html>