Outlook not receiving email

[Billsey]

This is a weird one (at least to me). On this machine Outlook isn't receiving
email. It just sits in receiving mode forever, or at least what seems
forever...

HP Pavilion dv9743cl Notebook PC; upgraded to Vista Ultimate; Office 2007
Ulitmate; Intel Core 2 Duo T7250; 3GB ram; 2x160GB HDs; 76GB free on C:,
131GB free on D:; Charter High-Speed Security Suite 7.03

I have several POP3 accounts, it doesn't matter which account I am trying.
The timeout error message I eventually get is similar to "Task 'accountname
-Receiving' reported error (0x800CCC0B): ' Unknown Error 0x800CCC0B".

I fired up my network sniffer to watch the transaction, everything goes
through fine until the end of the first message received where things just
stopped. Outlook never acknowledges the receipt and never asks for a second
message. (I did try deleting the first message off the server and it made no
difference, the next message had the same symptoms.)

The POP3 sequence is:
Open TCP socket on 110 to POP3 server
Server responds +OK
Client sends USER
Server responds +OK
Client sends PASS
Server responds +OK
Client sends STAT
Server responds +OK 41 445030
Client sends UIDL
Server responds +OK 41 messages (445030 cotets)
Client responds ACK
Server sends 282 bytes data
Client responds LIST
Server responds +OK 41 messages (445030 octets)
Client responds RETR 1
Server responds +OK 2017 octets
Server sends data payload 588 bytes (message contents)
Client sends ACK
.... and nothing more happens. :-(

I fired up Outlook on a second system and received all the email without
errors.

 

[VanguardLH]

This is a weird one (at least to me). On this machine Outlook isn't receiving
email. It just sits in receiving mode forever, or at least what seems
forever...

HP Pavilion dv9743cl Notebook PC; upgraded to Vista Ultimate; Office 2007
Ulitmate; Intel Core 2 Duo T7250; 3GB ram; 2x160GB HDs; 76GB free on C:,
131GB free on D:; Charter High-Speed Security Suite 7.03

I have several POP3 accounts, it doesn't matter which account I am trying.
The timeout error message I eventually get is similar to "Task 'accountname
-Receiving' reported error (0x800CCC0B): ' Unknown Error 0x800CCC0B".

I fired up my network sniffer to watch the transaction, everything goes
through fine until the end of the first message received where things just
stopped. Outlook never acknowledges the receipt and never asks for a second
message. (I did try deleting the first message off the server and it made no
difference, the next message had the same symptoms.)

The POP3 sequence is:
Open TCP socket on 110 to POP3 server
Server responds +OK
Client sends USER
Server responds +OK
Client sends PASS
Server responds +OK
Client sends STAT
Server responds +OK 41 445030
Client sends UIDL
Server responds +OK 41 messages (445030 cotets)
Client responds ACK
Server sends 282 bytes data
Client responds LIST
Server responds +OK 41 messages (445030 octets)
Client responds RETR 1
Server responds +OK 2017 octets
Server sends data payload 588 bytes (message contents)
Client sends ACK
... and nothing more happens. :-(

I fired up Outlook on a second system and received all the email without
errors.

Try running Outlook in its safe mode ("outlook.exe /safe") which does
not load any plug-ins you installed into Outlook. Also try disabling
email scanning in your anti-virus program since it can cause delays
during its interrogation of your email traffic.

 

[Billsey]

I've tried both of those, seperately and in tandem without a change in
symptoms. It's a little tricky to disable the anti-virus package, but I was
able to get both the anti-virus and anti-spam unloaded for testing. No luck.

 

[VanguardLH]

I've tried both of those, seperately and in tandem without a change in
symptoms. It's a little tricky to disable the anti-virus package, but I was
able to get both the anti-virus and anti-spam unloaded for testing. No luck.

Check if there is excessive packet loss on your Internet connection.
Run the following command in a DOS shell:

ping -n 25 www.yahoo.com

If the packet loss exceeds 4%, I've seen e-mail clients begin to get
flaky regarding their mail session stability. Once it got to 8%, I
couldn't get the mail session to work and the server disconnected so I
got the error message. While you could call your ISP to ensure the line
quality was okay, they only test signal strength, not how lossy is the
connection which you can only test on your end. You need to know how
lossy is your connection to tell them when you call them, and you may
have to push to get beyond the 1st-level tech support that answers their
phones that read a database of scripted responses.

Have you tested against any other POP servers (and not with the same
e-mail provider)? Gmail, BlueBottle, and other freebie providers
include POP support so you can test using their mail hosts. If the
problem doesn't exhibit itself at other providers then it could very
well be that your normal e-mail provider has networking or server
problems. See if you can find a different POP server with the same
provider, like a different regional mail host. The frontline support
desk will always deny there are problems with their service unless you
can prove it.

 

[Billsey]

I've tried from three different locations, using three different ISPs (one
cable, one fiber and one radio), and there are two different POP3 servers in
my list (there are actually several, but most are physically the same
server). This mornings attempt at the pings you suggested returned these
results:

Ping statistics for 209.131.36.158:
Packets: Sent = 25, Received = 25, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 21ms, Average = 19ms

 

[VanguardLH]

I've tried from three different locations, using three different ISPs (one
cable, one fiber and one radio), and there are two different POP3 servers in
my list (there are actually several, but most are physically the same
server). This mornings attempt at the pings you suggested returned these
results:

Ping statistics for 209.131.36.158:
Packets: Sent = 25, Received = 25, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 21ms, Average = 19ms

Have you yet tried running Outlook in its safe mode ("outlook.exe
/safe") and, if that didn't help, tried rebooting Windows into its safe
mode (with networking)?