Defender has no anti-spam capabilities, John.

Having Defender installed /may/ slow down sending/receiving a bit,
especially if you have Email Scanning by your anti-virus application
enabled.

General OE Caveats:

- Don't use Inbox or Sent Items to archive messages. Move them to local
folders created for this purpose.

- Empty Deleted Items folder daily.

- Disable Background Compacting [N/A in SP2] and frequently perform a manual
compact of all OE folders while "working offline". More at
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm.

- Do not attempt to close OE via Task Manager or shutdown your machine if
Automatic Compacting is taking place (WinXP SP2 only).

- Your anti-virus application's email scanning feature can also cause
corruption. Disable it. It provides no additional protection.
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE, Shell/User, Security), Aumha.org VSOP, DTS-L.org

John S Goguen {459232} wrote:
Well, maybe not Frank but that is the only spam program I have running
and I just installed it before the problems. I disabled it and changed my
settings back and OE works as normal. You may be correct but I couldn't
find any other reason for the problem.
With Defender enabled I couldn't get the settings to work. I disabled it
and now OE works. I'm by no means an expert on ay of this, I'll leave
that up to guys like you. I appreciate the help very much.
--
That did it Tim. Thanks alot! Teh new MS Defender spyware program was
causing the issue. I changed the local host out to my email server
and whala'!

Windows Defender does not scan email like an anti-virus will if you let
it. Windows Defender can not have caused the problem.