I have tried a number of other avenues, even disabling the Windies firewall but when one of the error messages insists that the "server intentionally terminated the action" when trying check incoming emails it smacks of some sort of firewall/anti-virus/blockage. The problems are on two different generations of Windies and Avast did update more than usual on the Thursday morning that the problems started.
Thanks for your suggestions, though, perhaps you could be more explicit regarding "other possibilities". I am open to offers still.
Rans6........