Is Outlook Express becoming obsolete?

I've been trying to send and receive emails all day from OE and I keep getting error messages saying my 2 email addresses that I use through OE are refusing to allow email through OE anymore.

I've been using 2 different web based email address for over a year through OE. One is a Hotmail account and the other through my server. Now neither is allowing email through OE. I find it too coincidental that both addresses have stopped allowing OE on the same day.

I really like to do my emails through OE as I can write them offline and send them whenever I want. Also I can access already received emails offline without having to go through multiple pages of downloads just to get to my folders where the emails are stored. Working with OE is just so much faster than working through the web based email client directly.

Is anyone else having problems with web based emails going through OE?

Does anyone have any thoughts about this?

Did you installed any software like a firewall or something else?

You can always try to reconfigure your accounts or perform a system restore.

Hi winandy,

No nothing has changed on my computer. I haven't installed anything.

The weird part is that sometimes the emails send and receive OK and other times they don't. After I posted this last night the Hotmail account allowed emails through again (both ways - send and receive). The Wildblue account still won't send through Outlook Express though even if I change the setting to make that the default client.

The most annoying part of all this is that if I go through the web based Hotmail it puts ads at the bottom of all my emails and I can't change or delete those. The ads appear at the receiving end and in my Sent folder but don't show before I send the email so they are putting the ads in after I have hit the Send button. How rude!!

The ads are how they make their money, though ... unless you're using a paid service in which case I'd agree that it's downright rude to shove ads at the end of your messages when you're paying to use the service.

Check the Hotmail help screen to see what port your should use, and how to configure the SMTP side of the OE accounts. It may be that they are making changes, and you're using old settings that sometimes work and sometimes don't.

I had a very weird error the other day when I tried to send 3 email messages, and although they appeared to send OK (they moved from my Outbox into my Sent Items folder), I kept getting a message about the SMTP server timing out and did I want to wait for 60 seconds or give up. In actual fact, I didn't have a choice - I kept getting that message every minute regardless of which button I clicked until I gave it a three-finger salute

It's also worth checking to make sure your Internet connection is fully functional, and also that you haven't set your firewall to block the sending ports used by OE.

Take a look here for a bit more information.

Thanks Angoid,

I'll check the Hotmail Help link. I didn't know there was one until you just mentioned it. I went to add another Hotmail account to OE the other day and it told me to enter the SMTP info and I had no idea what the heck that was or where to find it so I gave up.

It seems to be working now. I had to update the actual Hotmail account to the new Live Hotmail (as they call it) and it seems to be back to normal again. I still check the actual web based Hotmail from time to time to make sure nothing is still lurking there and it's all getting through to OE.

Apparently the old accounts weren't being allowed to go through OE anymore so you had to update/upgrade to the new Hotmail although the original Hotmail address still remains the same. Why bother I say.