Outlook 2007 won't send mail

[Ken Mullins]

I am been stumped all weekend. Last Wednesday Outlook 2007 stopped sending
my email. No error messages, in fact a copy of the message even appears in
the sent items folder – however no one (including me) is getting anything
sent from my Outlook email account. I am receiving email just fine.

My Web Mail account works and Outlook Express works fine. I have tripled
checked my e-mail setting – they are correct. I contacted Time Warner / Road
Runner – no problems on their end. My wife (using a separate computer) can
send and receive just fine with Outlook 2003 on a “sub-accountâ€.

I am running Windows XP Pro SP2, with Office 2007 SP1.

I disabled McAfee Antivirus and Zone Alarm – same problem. I un-installed
Outlook, then re-installed -- same problem.

On an other forum, I saw the suggestion to change the MTU (from 1500 to
1492). The individual said that that did not help. But last night I was
desperate and decided to give it a try. I went to my router (Netgear) and
changed the MTU and I can now send email from Outlook 2007. I tried it again
this morning and it is still working.

For anybody with a similar problem (Outlook 2007, can’t send email, but no
error messages). This same thing happened to me about 6 months ago. I
un-installed then re-installed Outlook and that fixed my problem -- This time
the un-install / re-install did not solve my problem. After trying close to
a hundred things, changing the MTU did resolve my problem. I did not see
anything about this on the Technet.

Unfortunately this afternoon, I am back where I started. Outlook 2007 is
receiving mail just fine, but not sending email. The MTU change only
temporally “fixed†the problem. All other programs are working normally.

 

[Ken Mullins]

Last night I spent time both on-line chat and phone calls with Time Warner
(TW). They were not very helpful. They insisted that nothing was wrong with
their servers; the problem was with Outlook 2007. However the log showed
that the messages were received by their server – but that did not matter.
My theory is that these were low level tech support and TW would not let them
near a server.

I don’t know why, but I turned off my signature block – and low and behold
the message went through. So I played with it awhile and found that the URL
to my home page was the culprit. I created a new signature block (I though
maybe my old block was corrupted) – same thing happened. ULRs in the message
body go through OK, it only in the signature block. I don’t know why. The
log shows that the message was received by smtp-server.satx.rr.com – so they
must be doing something strange.

I have spent a week of time trying to solve this frustrating problem. BTW
(By The Way) the MTU is back to 1500. TW has never been very high on my list
of favorite tech companies, now they are even lower.