-=PCTechTalk=- Re: email problems
- From: "Don" <dsw32952@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2009 20:33:31 -0800
These problems have been ongoing for weeks and weeks. Its just been much
worse lately. After I wrote that message I went to web interface for one
account and eliminated the spam. No help. Eliminated messages with
attachments. It worked. Go figure. While I was at work two of the problem
accounts actually delivered some email. After work, they both failed. I
don't know what to think.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gman" <gman.pctt@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 12:42 PM
Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: email problems
> Don,
> I believe you're seeing the effects of one or more of a couple of
> things, none of which you can control.
>
> For one, there was a major Spam server shut down by the authorities a
> couple of months back. This temporarily put a lot of Spammers out of
> business until they could figure out another way to get their junk
> through.
> Well, most of them have joined the botnet craze and we're just about back
> to
> where we were, Spam-wise, before the shutdown. Since these new Spams are
> now coming from individual's PC's, ALL email servers are affected instead
> of
> just the one that was shut down. Just about all ISPs' email servers are
> severely strained under the extra source load.
>
> Secondly, there has been the introduction of several new types of
> multi-attack malware released into the wild over the last year+. Of
> course,
> some of them are designed specifically to attack email servers. If you
> have
> several email addresses with a single email server (ISP or otherwise),
> chances are good that they are spread out across more than one physical
> server. If a single ISP has a bank of 30 email servers and one of them
> becomes infected, it will only affect the email of the accounts on that
> one
> server. This one is a less likely scenario than the one above (someone's
> job is on the line if an infection is allowed to persist for too long),
> but
> it's still a consideration worth mentioning.
>
> Finally, email servers store our messages on hard drives and all hard
> drives eventually develop corruption issues that have to be handled. The
> only way to handle them is to take them "offline" and run a Scandisk-type
> program on them. All professional email server companies have duplicate
> backup drives that are put into service just prior to the original being
> removed fromt he system, but there IS a miniscule bump service during the
> switch. There are also times when a drive in operation simply gives up
> the
> ghost and the server automatically switches itself over to the second
> drive.
> Those transistions take a little longer since the server software has to
> first determine that the 'glitch' it's experiencing, is in fact, a faulty
> drive. Again, I'm reaching a bit here but these are all things that
> happen
> beind the scenes that can affect the delivery of our messages.
>
> Peace,
> Gman
> http://www.bornagainamerican.org
>
> "The only dumb questions are the ones we fail to ask"
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "dsw32952" <dsw32952@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 12:56 PM
> Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- email problems
>
>
>>I have been having nothing but problems with email since I left for
>> vacation. I am now home and the problems remain for the most part.
>> These
>> problems range from unknown server errors to server timeouts to server
>> terminated the connection for any of several reasons. These problems
>> impact
>> not only SMTP but also POP. Very frustrating. Add to it the frustration
>> of
>> trying to use the HP incarnation of Vista and I am about ready to chuck
>> the
>> computers into the dumpster. I've been home since Friday night and still
>> have not unpacked or setup anything computer related except to plug in
>> this
>> laptop to login to Gmail and send a couple of messages to the group.
>> The email problems span across all email servers, Yahoo, Yahoo Plus,
>> Gmail
>> and Roadrunner. What is really frustrating is it is typically only ONE
>> email addy at each server at one time. Example: Don101 at RR, but not
>> dwilcox or dwilcox3. don.32952 at gmail but not dsw32952
>>
>> I came home to Larry having email problems with his larryfowler.com email
>> address. At least that one was easy to solve... the server timed out
>> trying
>> to deliver a 5.7MB email. I deleted it at the webmail interface and his
>> account worked fine.
>>
>> With my accounts I have tried closing OE, deleting the inbox and then
>> starting OE again to create a new inbox.dbx. This did not work, Coupled
>> witht the fact that other email accounts deliver OK to the inbox suggests
>> the problem is not a corrupt inbox.
>>
>> I have disbaled all inbound and outbound scanning of email to avoid the
>> time
>> delay for scanning larger emails to cause problems.
>>
>> I have tried setting up separate identities in OE with different accounts
>> in
>> each. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't.
>>
>> Sometimes I can login to webmail interfaces and delete all the spam and
>> other unnecesaary email and it will download OK. Sometimes it doesn't.
>>
>> I tried using Thunderbird. A little help. But it has other problems.
>> First the SMTP problem noted above and second, I am unable to configure
>> the
>> feature that automatically saves attachments. That is a MUST have
>> ability
>> since there is no 3rd party utility available that I know of to extract
>> the
>> attachments in bulk.
>>
>> The most frustrating part of it all is that it affects only ONE email
>> account (the most heavily used) at each server. If ALL accounts were
>> affected I would be more suspicious of Outlook Express.
>>
>> Anybody got any ideas? Using web based interface on a permanent basis is
>> not an option.
>>
>> Don
>
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