Email receive problem

[BOAC]

I have a friend who is 'very basic' at computing and she is having problems receiving emails from me. Programme is Outlook Express, and I think XP. If I send a basic text only mx, html or rich text, she gets it fine. I send a Word attachment, no problem. I send a graphic attachment, JPG or gif, and she says it 'downloads', produces an 'envelope' in the sys tray, but never gets to the inbox, and clicking on the envelope does now't. She claims to be receiving picture attachmernts from others ok. She uses McAfee AV. Got me stumped!

[kenhughes]

A few items for clarification please:

1. What mail program are you using?
2. Can other people receive pics from you?
3. Are you sending the pics in the body of the email or as an attachment.

I'm also tempted to ask how large they are - on the grounds that your ISP or hers may have a size limit imposed on the mail server. But AFAIK, if the email is oversize, the whole thing gets dumped, not just part of it, so the envelope wouldn't show up in your friend's SysTray.

[BAMRA wake up]

Get her to check in the 'Tools' pull down menu, under 'Options', the 'security' tab, there are 2 boxes which should be unticked:

'Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus'

'Block images and other external content in HTML e-mail'

[BOAC]

Thanks both:

KH
1) OE Win XP Sp3
2) Yes- no problems elsewhere
3) Attachment, around 70k, so size 'is not important'

Bamra

Both done a few days ago and no change.

It has to be something on her machine and I suspect McAfee, but I don't know the programme. Is it possible to block graphics attachments from selected addresses with it?

[kenhughes]

There are a few known compatibility problems between McAfee and Outlook Express where incoming emails just "disappear" due to the index getting partially trashed. Apparently, McAfee are aware of the problem and are working on a fix.

In the mean time, the options are: Use a different email client or - if this is inconvenient - select the "Compact Messages In The Background" option in Outlook Express, which is supposed to alleviate the problem.

Alternatively, disable email scan, internet filter and download scan in McAfee virus scanner, leaving only system scan (which leaves mailboxes alone) working. This removes half the purpose of having AV software in the first place.

It's a good few months since I last used McAfee but, from memory, there is no setting to block emails or attachments from specified addresses - it's all or nothing.

Ken

[BOAC]

KH - useful stuff - thanks - I'll have a Google on that.

[BOAC]

Its taken a while, but I have finally got her to find and look in the McAfee spambox and there they all are! Apparently in 'bold' if that makes sense?

I would appreciate help from a Mcafee user in how to set up this spamtrap thing as the McAfee help site insists on checking MY machine for McAfee products before helping, which is a bit of a problem since I don't have any

Also trying to get her up and running with a new Pop3 account I have setup and again I supect McAfee is screwing it up since she cannot send or receive on it and is getting the old

Account: 'mail.xxxxxxx.com', Server: ''mail.xxxxxxx.com'', Protocol: SMTP, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 11004, Error Number: 0x800CCC0D

message. I have sent screen shots of a 'normal' Outlook Express setup but no change.

[Wader2]

Bold means unread. Naturally all spam will be in bold unless deliberately read.All she has to do is drag them back to the inbox; this may be necessary as Outlook 2007 does not allow the preview of items in spam or junk folders.

[BOAC]

Thanks Wader - that is the easy bit! Prog is OE6. What I need to find out is why 1 email with jpg goes to inbox and then 4 go to spambox? Same size atts, same sender. I'd like some help on this infernal problem that McAfee seems to have with OE that I see all over Google too Do I understand that if she is running Spamkiller (we have not establised that yet) then the SMTP settings need to change to local host? What about outbound Pop stuff? Can it be blocking that?

Normally I'd tell her to ditch it and get a decent av prog but it came paid for.

[jimtherev]

??AOL??

Just one other thing: if either of you uses AOL as your isp, this may be summat to do with it.

I'm too indolent to move from AOL so had exactly the same problem as you. In the end I discovered that one of the many issues with AOL is that it sometimes won't happily deal with attachments to an HTML file, but with text files it's a pussycat. Could this explain the inconsistency you experience?

A couple of test files could give an answer? Wotcherfink?
Jim

[kenhughes]

Error Number: 0x800CCC0D is usually associated with server cannot be found.

I assume you've checked and double-checked the account settings, so my best guess would be the firewall - there's one of those in McAfee too.