BT email login conundrum

[Pelikal]

I'm actually posting this on behalf of a senior gent, a close neighbour. He has a desktop computer, Win7, and he can log in to his BT email from there ok.

He recently bought a laptop also win7 and can not log in to his BT mail from it. Repeated message, password not recognised, try again in 15 minutes. However, I could log in to my BT account from it.

I tried shutting down the desk top and disconnecting it from the internet so it's isolated but still can't login from the laptop.

I've posted on the BT community forum and the answer I had was resetting the password. Something to do with logging in from a new device. Seems very odd to me, though changing the password did occur to me (we haven't yet tried resetting the password).

He was on the phone to BT earlier for 1hr 47mins and they couldn't resolve it.

The really worrying bit for me is that he was quoted £70.00 for having a local company come out to fix it. They said they needed both the laptop and the desktop to resolve it. What has me stumped is why the desktop figures into it. Apparently, they even suggested the desktop needs more RAM. Surely, nothing to do with the desktop.

If this rings a bell with anyone here, I would be grateful for a response, because I'm baffled.:ugh::ugh:

[Keef]

Sounds strange to me, too.

I've had a similar problem several times, with my stuff and with a couple of friends. The fix that worked was to remove the offending e-mail account altogether from the misbehaving device, shut it down, restart it, and reinstall.

That's been needed quite a few times with iPhones and iPads, and a couple of times with laptops.

No, I don't have a clue what removing and adding back does, other than that it worked.

[mixture]

Pelikal,

Honestly, my suggestion ?

Its BT, and its a BT Retail Consumer service, so you're really at the bottom of the pits.

If I were you, don't waste your time, I'd just escalate it to the so called "Chairman's Office" and be done with it. Its quite obvious in true BT style that all these suggestions of extra RAM and the desktop having something to do with the price of eggs are all utter bull.

Doesn't actually get anywhere near the Chairman, they've got a HLE (High Level Escalations) team that deals with all the incompetence. To give them their due, the guys in HLE are quite good and have sufficient ass-kicking authority to get things done.

Check your PMs for a pointer in the right direction.

[Saab Dastard]

Whenever virgin media have email authentication problems (happens several times a year, as it's gmail under the hood), the only way to get email back on SWMBO's ipad is to delete and recreate the email profile / account. Nothing else works - it should (most overworked word in IT, that) not be necessary, but is.

Is this a local thick email client (Outlook / Windows Live mail / Thunderbird etc.) or a purely webmail connection? If the former there's lots of settings to get just so, if the latter it's a bit weird.

SD

[Pelikal]

Thank you for your responses. Work in progress as they say.:rolleyes:

[Pelikal]

SD, not an email client. Trying to log in to BT Mail direct. Mixture, thanks.

[Ancient Observer]

I've used bt mail for many years, and seldom had a problem with it, whether going in from OE in the past, or outlook now, or going in via their website. The website allows access from any of the gadgets around the house - Apple, MS, old, new etc.
So I cannot add to the technical side of the question.

There is a little trick to check. On the lappie, are you going in via the BT.COM website? There used to be another access point, which took you through a more Yahoo-ey front end. This no longer works. Confusingly, it looks similar to the BT.com entry.
Now you need to go to BT.com, then click on Existing Customers, then click on e-mail, then sign in to e-mail.
Another little check is that my BT com access from my Android does not allow me to save sign in details - or, rather, it tries to save them, but BT responds with the password not recognised reply. So I type in both my email address and my password each time I access the email via android.

I will, however, endorse what mixture says - get serviced by that Chairman/CEO office at BT, and things happen.

[boguing]

When I use a 'new device' to get into a Santander account. I' get a message saying that 'we do not recognise this computer' and they send me a text message with a code to input.

How Santander do this I know not, but assume that they look at the mac address. I'm wondering if BT are doing this with his email account, and that something is stopping him seeing a pop-up message on the laptop?

[mixture]

they look at the mac address

MAC Addresses are OSI layer 2, no way they can be seen outside of your local broadcast network.

I suspect 'we do not recognise this computer' is probably down to nothing more than a cookie in the browser.

[Pelikal]

Oh well, chap has had both the desktop and the laptop taken away by the company BT recommended. Hey ho.....:\

[Guest 112233]

Recently I had to change my btopenworld.com to btinternet.com with BT on the account details on the router. I had exactly the same symptoms as your neighbor - I suspect in my case my E Mail A/C might have been compromised.

CAT III