Outlook throws up login window when pop3 login fails. How to stop thatbehavior?

[Outlook Guy]

My residential ISP (Bell Sympatico) used to host customer e-mail
accounts on it's own servers some years ago. Since that time, it has
been on a campaign to migrate customers over to hotmail's web-based
email service (while still maintaining .sympatico.ca addresses).

For those that still pull pop3 mail from Sympatico's server
(pop1.sympatico.ca), Bell employs some sort of proxy translation which
routes the pop3 login requests to the appropriate hotmail server
(pophm.sympatico.ca I believe).

This proxy transaction has suffered bouts of sporadic, transient
failures for the past year or two. I happen to use Outlook 2000 as my
mail client, configured to check several pop3 accounts every few minutes
(5 to 10 minutes typically). When a pop3 login failure occurs, outlook
will throw up a login window showing user name, password, and a
"remember password" checkbox. The user name and password is always
filled in, but to dismiss the window I have to restore the check in the
"remember password" box and then hit OK. The login window then goes
away, and because it does not immediately come back I presume the login
happened correctly without issue. This will happen several times per
hour while outlook is running.

I'm assuming that Sympatico is either causing the intermittent failure
of the login process, or they are willfully not investigating and
correcting it. I'm speculating that their motivation is to force the
relatively few remaining people still using pop1.sympatico.ca to migrate
directly to the hotmail product so they can shut down their
popx.sympatico.ca servers and essentially remove themselves from the
obligation of provisioning e-mail service for their residential
customers. This irritating behavior of the pop3 login failure would
help to accomplish that goal.

Hence my question here, which is how can I set outlook to NOT prompt me
with a login window when a pop3 login failure occurs, but instead have
it simply ignore the incident and retry it on it's own, automatically,
without needing assistance from me.

 

[Outlook Guy]

POP only has 2 status codes: +OK and -ERR. There may be a text
comment appended to the error issued by the server in response
to a command from the client but they are not standard strings
so no e-mail client can decipher those strings. The client only
sees +OK or -ERR to the result of the command it issues.

I've enabled smtp logging in outlook 2000 (which required the creation
of a new registry key).

This is an example of what is happening during one of these failed login
events:

Microsoft Internet Messaging API 5.00.2919.6600
POP3 Log started at 06/11/2009 10:01:38

POP3: 10:01:45 [db] Connecting to 'pop1.sympatico.ca' on port 110.
POP3: 10:01:45 [rx] +OK InterMail POP3 server ready.
POP3: 10:01:45 [tx] USER b1xxxxxx
POP3: 10:01:45 [rx] +OK please send PASS command
POP3: 10:01:45 [tx] PASS ********
POP3: 10:01:46 [rx] -ERR mail storage services unavailable, wait a
few minutes and try again.
POP3: 10:01:46 [db] Connection to 'pop1.sympatico.ca' closed.
POP3: 10:01:48 [db] Connecting to 'pop1.sympatico.ca' on port 110.
POP3: 10:01:48 [rx] +OK InterMail POP3 server ready.
POP3: 10:01:48 [tx] USER b1xxxxxx
POP3: 10:01:48 [rx] +OK please send PASS command
POP3: 10:01:48 [tx] PASS ********
POP3: 10:01:48 [rx] +OK mailbox has 0 messages
POP3: 10:01:48 [tx] STAT
POP3: 10:01:48 [rx] +OK 0 0
POP3: 10:01:48 [tx] QUIT
POP3: 10:01:48 [rx] +OK mailbox unchanged, POP3 server signing off
POP3: 10:01:48 [db] Connection to 'pop1.sympatico.ca' closed.

I suppose that if there was some way to have Outlook trap or look for
"ERR mail storage services unavailable" and in that case have it
immediately try the login again without prompting me, that would be
ideal.

Otherwise, is there a pop3 proxy I can install that will do this (and
nothing else) for me? And where outlook would then perform a pop3 login
into the proxy? I guess it would sort of be like a local pop3 server
for outlook?

 

[VanguardLH]

-ERR mail storage services unavailable, wait a
few minutes and try again.

That is a server-side generated error. It obviously did accept the
login credentials so a mail session did get created. Then the server
puked and its services were not available (but not why). The client
didn't even issue any commands yet, like a STAT or LIST command. The
server looks to have accepted the login and then immediately said it
wasn't usable (too busy, failed to pass-off the connection to a load-
balancing host, or whatever is THEIR problem). There isn't anything
that you can do to fix their problem on their end.

You might want to up the timeout under Advanced settings for the e-mail
account defined in Outlook. This setting has never been clearly defined
by Microsoft but my past readings indicate it is the time the client
expects for the server to establish a mail session (how long after
sending PASS command until it gets an +OK) and not how long to wait to
start receiving bytes when retrieving a message (i.e., how long to wait
after sending a RETR and then getting back an acknowledge followed by
the bytes for the message). The default is 1 minute. Up it to 2 or
even jump to 5.

You could see if disabling the superfluous e-mail scanning by your
anti-virus software eliminates any timeouts. However, the comment
string in the -ERR status doesn't indicate a timeout problem on your end
(but a timeout on their end to actually use the establish mail session
granted by their auth server to get at their mail server).

It looks like it's time to call Sympatico to bitch about an issue with
their auth server error after accepting the login credentials.
Alternatively, see if they permit SSL connects. Those take more
resources and may slow the time between authenticate to passing to mail
server to eliminate whatever problem is on their end. Understand that
using SSL only encrypts the login credentials, not the messages
transferred from the mail server to you.