I've done an upgrade from Win95 to Win98se, by deleting win.com and
installing Win98se into the same directory as Win95 (C:\Windows).

AOL 6.0 was installed under Win95 as well as a couple firewall programs
(Sygate Personal Firewall and ZoneAlarm).

Now I can access the internet as normal through AOL and Internet Explorer
5.5, however Outlook Express will only sometimes connect to the mail POP3
mail server. Most of the time it returns a TCP/IP error as if it isn't
connected. Also, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger fail to connect most of
the time. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it, but occassionally
they will connect. It also doesn't matter if I connect through AOL, another
ISP with Windows DUN, or even through an ethernet connection - the problem
is the same.

I've tried re-installing all Windows 98 network components, and doing a
manual re-install of TCP according the MS Knowledge base article. Neither
have made any difference.

Has anyone come across this one before?? Any suggestions would be most
appreciated.


Thanks,
Ben.