Outlook problems
 

For a month or so I have had problems when checking emails with freeserve on my home PC.

When I go in and send/receive sometimes it goes through mainly fine and other times it keeps on coming up with the 'enter network password' box.

I have subsequently changed to plusnet broadband and this does not seem to have made it worse.

Anyone any ideas? Freeserve help was hopeless.

Hi Ozz i had problems with outlook in the end a computer guy said get rid of outlook and use hotmail of another email provider.

In the end i decided to use my btopenworld email service. This has been fine untill yarhoo took over now it's just a bit of a pain, never askes you to log in the same way twice!

Good look

Mark

FreeServe suffers from far too many people using their services and it does get very congested at times - you can go through a number of dialing cycles before finally getting a connection.

You'll probably find that it's just congestion on their email server, which is probably the most used part of their system. Keep trying and you should get in eventually. Outlook popping up the password box is not an Outlook problem in itself, as it happens with most email clients when they timeout trying to connect to the mail server.

I don't know if their pay service is any better, as you might use different email servers to the free service, which could mean they are less congested. You might want to upgrade or, depending on how attached to your email address you are, you may want to switch to a different provider.

Just noticed that you're now using a different ISP than Freeserve...

You may want to check that you've got Outlook setup to use your email password when sending email - this is not enabled by default when setting up an account in Outlook.

FreeServe will let you send email without using a password to connect to their server while you are on their system (ie, using their dial-up or broadband) because they know who you are. When you are using another ISP, it won't let you "relay" email through them unless you provide your freeserve account password ... this is to stop spammers.

Simply open Outlook then goto Tools then the Accounts option from the menu.

Select the email account details you use for Freeserve, then in the Servers tab, there should be a setting under the "outgoing mail server" section called "My server requires authentication" - make sure this box is checked. You don't need to change anything under the settings button, as freeserve uses the same username/password for incoming and outgoing email.

Online guide here (substitute the Earthlink values for your freeserve ones):
http://support.earthlink.net/mu/1/ps.../5835.psc.html

and here's a note about Outlook not saving passwords in XP:
http://windows-help.net/WindowsXP/troub-01.html

Here's the offending window you're looking for...

Yes my settings are like that but the weird thing is that I can send no problem, just the coming back in that is a pain. Also until a couple of weeks ago I had another computer set up to check those addresses and that one did not do the same!!!

try setting up a web mail account, say at bt internet leave your incomming as the standard pop3 'your server' and change the out going to mail.btinternet.com (or whatever provider you use). I had this problem with a recent switch to broadband and this sorted it. in addition you will need to put in your new providers acc name and password press the settings button to get to this and it will route your mail via your webmail to outlook express oh and make sure your mail accounts are set to use any available carrier in this case your boardband thats under the connections tab

It was working ok before and started doing this before I changed to broadband.

It is strange because sometimes it goes straight through without asking me for passwords and other times it keeps asking (it shows the password too but clearly does not accept it).

Guess I'll have to live with it!

The fact that it works sometimes shows that it's not you - it must be freeserve.

I still think that your connection to the mail server is timing out, probably through congestion, as I sometimes get this with mine.

Least of my worries - see my other thread!