E-Mail Remembering password... kind of...

Hey,

I've got a client's computer that is "behaving weirdly". I've got her setup with 2 pop 3 e-mail accoutns in Outlook 2003. I can do an account test fine with both of them. However, on a relatively consistent basis, 1 or the other of the accounts will prompt for the username and password while sending and recieving even though both accounts have the info entered in the account setupis setup to remember it.

When it prompts, it shows the username and has the password asterisked out (SP?). If you click OK without making changes, it goes through and retrieves e-mail. If you hit cancel or close, you get an error and don't retrieve e-mail. It is rather bizarre and illogical. I have tried the different settings such as SPA authentication, and logging into mail server and/or checking for e-mail before sending, but SPA authentication isn't supported by their accounts and the checking for mail first has no affect.

The only thing that I can come up with is corruption on some level or related somehow to pst files that were imported from an old computer. One of the accounts is with Shaw Cable, a big Canadian Broadband Service Provider, the other one is with Look Communications which isn't a bad size either. I've had lots of experience with Shaw and used Look to do hosting for me for nearly 2 years with no trouble.

Any thoughts / ideas / suggestions are welcome.

The_Silent_One_1

How are you connecting generally ? PPPoE ?

& what happens with these accounts if you connect to them from another machine than this one - the same ?

You could also try deleting and recreating the accounts.

May also be a corrupt user profile but best to try a few things as Ed and I have pointed out first as rebuilding a profile is a bit time consuming.

emr

Try increasing the default timeout from 1 minute to 3-5 mintues.

Since password is working, maybe outlook timeout in 1 min and errors out. When you try again, the mail server is reachable and it starts working again.

Was the accounts created from ground up or imported? As people have been saying, delete and create if you have to.

I setup both accounts in my Outlook Express (I prefer not to use my outlook for testing), I didn't have any of those problems.

I should also mention 2 other things.

1. They are on wireless

2. They are recieving e-mail duplicates somewhat sporadically.

(Sometiems after recieving e-mail, they recieve 2nd copies 15-30 minutes later....)

They are on wireless? That changes... nothing. :)

Actually, even in OE, I would increase timeout just to see what happens.

But just in case, compact all folders, via <File> -> <Folder> -> <Compact All Folders>

This will recover from corrupt dbx files if there are any. Remember to put OE into Working Offline so no email comes through while you're compacting...

In fact, follow these instructions...

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/...orruption.mspx

I had someone getting duplicate email trace to a corrupt dbx.

My thoughts about wireless were that maybe they are dropping the connection for a split second just before the recieve mail function completes and that it causesing them to recieve it again later... although I guess that doesn't explain the ammount of delay in it coming 15-30 minutes later (or longer).

Also, they're not using OE, I was using OE for testing their account on my computer... however, they ahd another problem with their Outlook that was related to corrupt something-or-other with their contact list... might there be something else corrupt realted to the pst file or some setting somewhere?

What email virus scanner do you have? I've had problems with some types of email scanners and multiple accounts...

I'd suggest checking with the providers to see if they have any log entries that may help...

Multiple copies of emails usually indicates to me the connection is being severed before the delete command can be sent by the client or received by the server. We get some customers calling about email because of "pop-locks" where we have to go an kill the job on the server before it releases it. This usually only occurs on either bad internet connections or dialup connections.

I've usually moved or renamed the Outlook PST file and reimported everything into a new one, and that sometimes fixed some problems.