E-mail problem

[Brangwyn]

A quite nice alternative is Pocomail

http://www.pocomail.com/

Doesn't help your specific problem, but might be worth trying when/if you give up on Outlook (personally I use outlook but I have all mail delivered to a local email server first so haven't noticed any of the above reported weirdness)

You running a virus scanner or firewall, zonealarm type software? Thos can be nasty.

[Vantage]

How many mail messages are you getting these times when thins just "lock up"

James

[Silverbug]

with all those program installed, it could just be time for a format...it usually works wonders on niggly little problems like this.

[porpoise]

The most-recent time I experienced the lockup, there were 58 messages that could be downloaded and it froze on the 59th message. In the past, it had typically frozen on messages somewhere between the 40th and 60th message. I waited to go in and manually delete any message so that Vortech/Matrix tech. support could have a look, with no resolution to date (although they did have a few suggestions, which I've tried). While waiting, approx. 950 messages piled up in my inbox over several days (mostly junk of course). I have since gone in and manually deleted the junk mail and have been able to download mail since last night. But, this has been a recurring problem over several weeks now, so it will likely happen again.

I actually installed the additional e-mail programs on a spare machine at the office, not my normal work desktop or my laptop (which I use at both home and work). So, a format shouldn't be necessary, particularly since both of my regular machines work very nicely, except for this e-mail download issue. The purpose for installing the other e-mail programs was to test if this problem is an Outlook-specific issue, which, from my test, it apparently is not Outlook-specific.

It might be worth noting that the e-mail programs themselves aren't freezing, per se, but the download process is getting hung up on a particular message. I temporarily configured my e-mail as an IMAP account in Outlook and was able to download all 950-ish message headers yesterday and then manually deleted the messages I didn't want through the IMAP account. Then, I deleted the IMAP account in Outlook and downloaded my mail as a POP3 account. However, this is not a good permanent solution for me and it doesn't really solve the issue, it just circumvents it [I'm still trying to figure out what the real "issue" is of course].

I'm running McAfee VirusScan on each of my computers (but I turned it off to test if that was the problem and still wasn't able to download e-mail). No Zone Alarm, firewall software, etc. The firewall at home is on a Linksys BEFSR41 with the built in firewall in the router's default configuration. At work, we have a Netgear FVS318 also in the default configuration. Firmware in each of these is up to date.

Anyway, I will post again if/when this happens again and perhaps I will have some new information available that will spark an idea with someone. Until then, if any new ideas arise, please do post them here.

Thanks!