I run Outlook Express (ver. 5.50.4522.1200 on Win 98 SE) to check my Hotmail and several POP mails. When I check my mail from my campus LAN, I get errors on Hotmail (but not POP mails). Most of the time, the messages are still downloaded, but the errors are a pain in the butt. (Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it’s not getting errors right now, so I can’t tell you exactly what they are) Also when I check from my dialup at home (Bellsouth), everything is fine. Anyone know why this is, and if there is anything I can do to fix it?
And please don’t tell me I can check POP mail on Hotmail and please don’t tell me to get some other email program. I’m just looking for a solution to this problem.
Thanks,
Diver
Well, I don’t know how much of a help this is going to be, but maybe it will give you some ideas…anyway, I basically had the reverse problem that you did. When I would get POP mail from two different servers, one would work fine and the other one raised errors (I realize you were having problems only with Hotmail)
Anyway, one computer was running Windows 98, and the other one was running Windows NT. For the Outlook Express on NT I had to set up the “Receiving URL” as servername.domainname.com (for example, ‘outlookexpressserver.straightdope.com’) However, on the WIN98 Outlook Express, I had to drop the servername (just ‘straightdope.com’) to get my mail without errors.
Thanks, I guess i should have mentioned that I am on a laptop so i’m checking mail in both places on the same machine.
Then the only thing that comes to mind is that maybe the firewall for your campus’ network is causing a problem. I don’t know how you would get around that though. Maybe one of the IT guys for your university knows whats going on?
Sorry I can’t help out more than that.
I have the same problem with hotmail ocassionally. As you say, most of the time everything is fine, you just have to click on the error box to make it go away. I believe it may be a slower connection or the firewall creating a delay or something. I remember it happened a lot when I was in China.
To me it does not seem like it is worth spending a lot of time on it.