email going to black hole?

[Jeff106]

An interesting problem developed today with email. Incoming mail arrives with no problem. When I try to send an email, however, a different story. When I finish writing an email, I hit the Send/Receive button. The email appears to send - no error message, the email shows up in the Sent Items folder. But I've found out that the email has actually not gone anywhere. This is happening with new emails that I've started, as well as emails that I've replied to. I've tried sending myself test messages, but they don't arrive back. I've gone to my ISP's site to retrieve mail manually, and the mail is not there either. I've contacted my ISP, who had me delete my account information and start over from scratch, but nothing worked. I'd appreciate any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

edit: By the way, I'm using XP Pro and Outlook.

[Eric B]

The reason behind the error is because due to Outlook was unable to establish a connection to your email server. The most basic cause are, your mail server can be temporarily unavailable, incorrect account settings, the user profile must be damaged, the email in the pop3 is damaged, your antivirus configuration settings must be incorrect and the configuration settings of your firewall tool is incorrect.

[Pugsly]

If you click on the following link, it'll take you to the Outlook 2003 Help pages - where you can see a set of Tabs (Overview, Getting Started, Verify Settings, Common Errors, Troubleshooting, and Other Issues).Some POP problems are not specific to Outlook, so if you're able to send and receive successfully most of the time and our Common Errors and Troubleshooting tabs haven't addressed your issue, check our Other Issues tab for topics like accessing Gmail from multiple POP clients or being unable to download messages you sent to yourself.

[Jeff106]

If you click on the following link, it'll take you to the Outlook 2003 Help pages - where you can see a set of Tabs (Overview, Getting Started, Verify Settings, Common Errors, Troubleshooting, and Other Issues).Some POP problems are not specific to Outlook, so if you're able to send and receive successfully most of the time and our Common Errors and Troubleshooting tabs haven't addressed your issue, check our Other Issues tab for topics like accessing Gmail from multiple POP clients or being unable to download messages you sent to yourself.

Thanks, I'll take a look. The link you mentioned is not showing up, however. Would you mind posting it again?

I'll let you know what kind of luck I had...

[Pugsly]

Oops sorry forgot to give a link, here it is : http://mail.google.com/support/bin/a...y?answer=13278

Good luck

[Jeff106]

Still no luck sending email. Here's what has transpired the past few days:

I've contacted my ISP again, and they've assured me the problem is not with them. They keep going back to firewall/antivirus problems. I contacted Sunbelt Software Tech Support and described the problem to them, and they said that if I disable the firewall and antivirus and am still unable to send email, then the problem would not be with their product.

They did suggest I do a "diagnostic start-up", though, with none of the start-up programs running and then try to send an email with only Outlook open. I followed their instructions, and was not able to send OR receive email, and I no longer had internet access. I have no idea if this was significant or not, but I was feeling a bit in over my head so I put everything back the way it was. They also suggested doing a System Restore to the last known good configuration, but I had already done that several days prior.

At the completion of the attempted diagnostic start-up, I went back and checked email, and actually did receive a test email that was sent using the Tools>email accounts>... Test Account Settings feature. I tested the settings again, and received another test email back. However, when I try to send myself an email, I get nothing back, and when I try to send an email to another recipient, they are not receiving it.

This is very discouraging.