Strange Email Problem

[richard]

Bit a strange one. For our email we have 30 pop3 accounts that are hosted by our ISP which are used by staff.

I have one machine that refuses to connect to any mailbox and the ISP's smtp server no matter what email client is used, Outlook 2003, Thunderbird and even Outlook Express. Short of completely reinstalling everything I have done everything that I can possibly think of to sort this out but to no avail and it is beinginng to bug me.

[Geoff]

Is there any 3rd party firewall software installed?

[m25man]

Have you tried a winsock repair? If that doesn't work I'd just rebuild it.

Heres a link http://windowsxp.mvps.org/winsock.htm

This normally fixes a broken TCP/IP stack butchered by months of tinkering.

[tom_newton]

Diagnostic step 1:
telnet www.google.com 110

Now, google isnt a mailserver, so if you get a response you KNOW trheres something hijacking your pop3 and transparently proxying it (this is a good check for transparent web proxies as well).

Diagnostic step 2:
Wireshark

[richard]

Thanks for the advice. In the end I got it going by using the winsock repair utility suggested m25man.