Email Bag

Email Troubles

Many users have written to HAL-PC Magazine and called HALNet Support recently regarding problems caused by "corrupt" emails. Their complaints include:

  • "I keep downloading the same mail over and over again, and I have not made any changes to my email program."
  • "When I try to get my mail, it abruptly disconnects without getting all of my mail. The message says 'server has unexpectedly terminated the connection'."

These examples may mean that one of their email messages is "corrupted" within its header or data area. HALNet Support advises trying the following steps to remove the problem message:

  1. Go to the HAL-PC home page (www.hal-pc.org) and click on the HALNet "Web Based Email" link in the left column under the third heading, "HALNet."
  2. Enter your email address and password.
  3. In the next screen of the Web Based Email program, you can see all the mail that you have on the server. You can sort the messages in ascending or descending order by sender, subject, size or date received. You can view the contents of the email if you wish. When you find the offending email or an "odd looking" email, you can mark it for deletion in this screen. You should also delete any other unwanted emails, particularly those messages that are large and take more time to download. You should delete ALL the emails you can to make sure you get the one that is causing the problem and also to reduce the downloading of unwanted emails.
  4. Once you've done that, log out of the Web Based Email program and try again to get your mail with your regular email program as you normally do. If you are able to get your mail properly, then you have fixed the problem. If not, then you may still have a corrupted email residing on the server, and you will need to return to the Web Based Email screen to remove more messages. It will help to sort the messages in the order they were received, so that you can determine which message was next when the disconnection occurred.

Cannot Open Attachments

Many people have also reported being unable to open email attachments in Outlook Express. If you are having trouble viewing an email attachment, and have recently updated your Windows operating system, or are using Outlook Express 6, please note that you may have the open attachments option disabled.

The following information is from the Microsoft support web site regarding Using the Internet Explorer Unsafe File List to Filter E-mail Attachments.

To use the Internet Explorer unsafe file list to filter e-mail attachments:

  1. Start Outlook Express, and then on the Tools menu, click Options.
  2. Click the Security tab, and then click to select the Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus check box under Virus Protection.

This option is not enabled by default. If you enable this option, Outlook Express uses the Internet Explorer 6 unsafe file list and the Confirm open after download setting in Folder Options to determine whether a file is safe. Any e-mail attachment with a file type reported as "unsafe" is blocked from being downloaded.

For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article "Using Virus Protection Features in Outlook Express 6"posted at support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q291387, which describes several new features included in Microsoft Outlook Express 6 that are designed to protect against viruses that may be transmitted through e-mail messages.