...Comcast finally said it isn't their
problem, but mine, because their web-based email can send and receive
emails
to my account

Comcast just wanted to get rid of you: OE doesn't use the same mailserver as
does the webmail page, so being able to access mail at the latter doesn't
mean squat when it comes to accessing mail in the former, Fred.

Try disabling email scanning by your anti-virus application (not disabling
or uninstalling the anti-virus application itself). It provides no
additional protection, it may be causing the problem, and even Symantec says
it's not necessary:

paste
Disabling Email Scanning does not leave you unprotected against viruses that
are distributed as email attachments. Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect scans
incoming files as they are saved to your hard drive, including email and
email attachments. Email Scanning is just another layer on top of this. To
make sure that Auto-Protect is providing the maximum protection, keep
Auto-Protect enabled and run LiveUpdate regularly to ensure that you have
the most recent virus definitions.
/paste
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...02111812533106

Also disable or uninstall any anti-spam applications, too.
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE, OE, Security, Shell/User)
AumHa VSOP & Admin; DTS-L.org

Fred615 wrote:
About a week ago, I wasn't able to receive or send email using OE6 to
access
Comcast. After lots of foot dragging, Comcast finally said it isn't their
problem, but mine, because their web-based email can send and receive
emails
to my account. And I can also access any new email messages through a
browser to my account, but of course don't have access to my folders and
already saved emails.

When I launch OE6, it tries to connect but usually will download only the
same first 4 or 5 emails from their server. When I click on Send/Receive
to
see what's happening, I will often get a Login window but either OE6 is
not
transmitting the login info correctly or Comcast is not accepting it
because
the window just keeps on popping back up. And I also get the 60 second
time
out message popup.. The weird thing is that a day ago, it worked pretty
well for about an hour; I was able to get about 30 or my backlogged 90
messages and I was able to send messages also. But today it is back to
being
non-responsive.

I've double checked all the settings and even went through Comcast's
procedure for installing and double checking the OE6 settings even to the
point of changing the outgoing port # to 587 as suggested in their
documents.

Just a few minutes ago I launched OE6 and got the 15 or so messages I had
left in place on their server after using my browser to access the
web-based
mail center. So it is very erratic and seems to only work properly once
every few days for a short while. Because of that I find it hard to
believe that the problem lies with OE6.

But I am wide open to suggestions on where to look for the problem.