Jim Bunton wrote:
Dear Bruce,
Thanks for you response to me posting.

After having denied it my email provider finally admitted that the fault was
theirs!

Here is the Blueyonder ticket for the fault and the progress.

http://www.blueyonder.co.uk/status/s...?ticket=337032

Coincidentally, it occurred after a McAfee Update Engine download on my
system although I don't have email scanning enabled on any of my
mailers.

I've been tearing my hair out thinking it was a problem my end - I've
virus scanned, checked the firewall, installed an upgraded mail client
(from old Mozilla to Thunderbird) etc etc and been confused because
Outlook can receive mail (albeit erratically) but Mozilla/Thunderbird
only give error messages.

Outlook gives the 0x800CCC0F error when it should be reporting "no new
messages" . Moz/Thunderbird simply get refused connections. Yesterday
they received a few messages then hung and complained my
username/password were invalid whenever I retried. Webmail was fine,
but inconvenient. I only use Outlook and Outlook Express as ways of
testing it isn't a Moz problem.

Hope the Blueyonder link helps! At least it gives (lack of) progress.
Last update was 15:51 and they were still working on the problem.

There are suggestions from elsewhere that the weight of spam is killing
ISPs mailservers. Comparing what comes into my Freeserve (infested
with spam that gets through their filters) dialup to what comes into my
BY mailbox (almost nil spam), I can believe this.

Sarah