Sent email goes to black hole?

[Jeff]

An interesting development with email today. Incoming email arrives with no
problem - same as usual. When I go to send an email, I click on the
Send/Receive button and the email appears to go. I get no error message, and
the message shows up in the Sent Items folder. However, I've found out that
the emails are not going out to their recipients. I've tried sending a test
message to myself, and it doesn't come back. This happens with new emails
and replies to emails I've received. It appears that no outgoing mail of any
kind is leaving my computer. I contacted my ISP, who had me delete my
account settings and re-enter them from scratch. Nothing. I'm using XP Pro
and Outlook. Sunbelt Personal Firewall and Vipre antivirus/antispyware.
Suggestions would be welcome - thanks in advance.

 

[VanguardLH]

Jeff wrote (on Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:30:01 -0700):

An interesting development with email today. Incoming email arrives with no
problem - same as usual. When I go to send an email, I click on the
Send/Receive button and the email appears to go. I get no error message, and
the message shows up in the Sent Items folder. However, I've found out that
the emails are not going out to their recipients. I've tried sending a test
message to myself, and it doesn't come back. This happens with new emails
and replies to emails I've received. It appears that no outgoing mail of any
kind is leaving my computer. I contacted my ISP, who had me delete my
account settings and re-enter them from scratch. Nothing. I'm using XP Pro
and Outlook. Sunbelt Personal Firewall and Vipre antivirus/antispyware.
Suggestions would be welcome - thanks in advance.

If the item is moving from the Outbox folder to the Sent Items folder,
Outlook received a success status from the mail server saying the mail
server accepted the message. You can't do anything about it after that.
They have your message and it is up to them to deliver it. The problem
is with whomever is your e-mail provider.

This assumes there is nothing between your e-mail client and the mail
server that intercepts your e-mail traffic. Did you enable the
superfluous e-mail scanning function in your anti-virus software? Yet
tried disabling it?

 

[Jeff]

Jeff wrote (on Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:30:01 -0700):


If the item is moving from the Outbox folder to the Sent Items folder,
Outlook received a success status from the mail server saying the mail
server accepted the message. You can't do anything about it after that.
They have your message and it is up to them to deliver it. The problem
is with whomever is your e-mail provider.

This assumes there is nothing between your e-mail client and the mail
server that intercepts your e-mail traffic. Did you enable the
superfluous e-mail scanning function in your anti-virus software? Yet
tried disabling it?

I just got through trying to send myself an email with the email scanning
function disabled and enabled - no difference (and no incoming email).

 

[VanguardLH]

Jeff wrote (on Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:12:22 -0700):

I just got through trying to send myself an email with the email scanning
function disabled and enabled - no difference (and no incoming email).

Whose anti-virus product?

 

[Jeff]

Jeff wrote (on Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:12:22 -0700):


Whose anti-virus product?

Vipre antivirus/antispyware - from Sunbelt.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

1. Disable e-mail scanning in your AV.
2. Disable e-mail scanning in your firewall.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
ALWAYS post your Outlook version.
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375


After furious head scratching, Jeff asked:

| An interesting development with email today. Incoming email arrives
| with no problem - same as usual. When I go to send an email, I click
| on the Send/Receive button and the email appears to go. I get no
| error message, and the message shows up in the Sent Items folder.
| However, I've found out that the emails are not going out to their
| recipients. I've tried sending a test message to myself, and it
| doesn't come back. This happens with new emails and replies to
| emails I've received. It appears that no outgoing mail of any kind
| is leaving my computer. I contacted my ISP, who had me delete my
| account settings and re-enter them from scratch. Nothing. I'm using
| XP Pro and Outlook. Sunbelt Personal Firewall and Vipre
| antivirus/antispyware. Suggestions would be welcome - thanks in
| advance.

 

[VanguardLH]

Jeff wrote (on Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:12:01 -0700):

Vipre antivirus/antispyware - from Sunbelt.

Some anti-virus products will not get out of the way (i.e., they still
intercept e-mail traffic). Disabling their e-mail scanner still has
your e-mail traffic go through their transparent proxy but they no
longer interrogate its content. To get rid of their interception, you
have to uninstall and do a custom install but without their e-mail
scanner. AVG is like this. I don't know about Vipre.

Some anti-virus programs pretend to be the mail server. Rather than
interrogate your e-mail traffic, they instead accept it as though they
were the mail server. Then they inspect the e-mail and, if okay, they
connect to the real mail server to pass on the message. So your e-mail
client gets a good status back from their pseudo-mail server but that
doesn't mean the anti-virus passed it on okay to the real mail server.
You have to go look at the status log for the anti-virus program to see
if it managed to pass on the message to the real mail server after
accepting it from your e-mail client. I think McAfee is like this. The
send looks okay in your e-mail client but McAfee couldn't get it
transmitted to the real mail server; however, your e-mail client did its
job so there is no error there and instead you have to go look in
McAfee's logs to see if it forwarded the e-mail okay.

If you use a router, it probably includes a firewall. That can protect
you from unsolicited inbound connections. So see what happens when you
uninstall all the Sunbelt stuff.

 

[Jeff]

1. Disable e-mail scanning in your AV.
2. Disable e-mail scanning in your firewall.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
ALWAYS post your Outlook version.
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375


After furious head scratching, Jeff asked:

| An interesting development with email today. Incoming email arrives
| with no problem - same as usual. When I go to send an email, I click
| on the Send/Receive button and the email appears to go. I get no
| error message, and the message shows up in the Sent Items folder.
| However, I've found out that the emails are not going out to their
| recipients. I've tried sending a test message to myself, and it
| doesn't come back. This happens with new emails and replies to
| emails I've received. It appears that no outgoing mail of any kind
| is leaving my computer. I contacted my ISP, who had me delete my
| account settings and re-enter them from scratch. Nothing. I'm using
| XP Pro and Outlook. Sunbelt Personal Firewall and Vipre
| antivirus/antispyware. Suggestions would be welcome - thanks in
| advance.

I've tried disabling anything to do with email in both the firewall and
antivirus software - no luck. I have a support request out to Sunbelt to see
if this is a known issue before doing any uninstall/reinstall of their
product. I was really hoping for a reply today, but maybe tomorrow.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

Have you tried using a Search folder to see if an errant rule is moving mail
to an unintended location?

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
ALWAYS post your Outlook version.
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375


After furious head scratching, Jeff asked:

| "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:
|
|| 1. Disable e-mail scanning in your AV.
|| 2. Disable e-mail scanning in your firewall.
||
|| --
|| Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
||
|| Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
|| ALWAYS post your Outlook version.
|| How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375
||
||
|| After furious head scratching, Jeff asked:
||
||| An interesting development with email today. Incoming email arrives
||| with no problem - same as usual. When I go to send an email, I
||| click on the Send/Receive button and the email appears to go. I
||| get no error message, and the message shows up in the Sent Items
||| folder. However, I've found out that the emails are not going out
||| to their recipients. I've tried sending a test message to myself,
||| and it doesn't come back. This happens with new emails and replies
||| to emails I've received. It appears that no outgoing mail of any
||| kind is leaving my computer. I contacted my ISP, who had me delete
||| my account settings and re-enter them from scratch. Nothing. I'm
||| using XP Pro and Outlook. Sunbelt Personal Firewall and Vipre
||| antivirus/antispyware. Suggestions would be welcome - thanks in
||| advance.
|
| I've tried disabling anything to do with email in both the firewall
| and antivirus software - no luck. I have a support request out to
| Sunbelt to see if this is a known issue before doing any
| uninstall/reinstall of their product. I was really hoping for a
| reply today, but maybe tomorrow.

 

[Jeff]

Have you tried using a Search folder to see if an errant rule is moving mail
to an unintended location?

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
ALWAYS post your Outlook version.
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375

I looked for any mail rule that might be sending my email off into the
unknown, but there was nothing suspicious

I heard back from Sunbelt - they said if disabling their software did not
result in my mail being sent, then this indicates to them that the issue is
not with their product.

They suggested I do a "diagnostic start-up", with none of the start-up
programs loading. I did this, and the result was Outlook not being able to
send OR receive mail (messages about not being able to connect to the
server). I also had no internet access. I have no idea if this is
significant or not... I put things back the way they were, and didn't
explore this avenue any further because, to tell the truth, I'm getting
really discouraged with this whole problem.

That being said, I checked email a short time ago, and did receive a test
email back that was sent using the Tools>Email Accounts>...Test Account
Settings feature. I tested the settings again, and received another reply
from this. However, when I try to send myself any kind of message, I get
nothing in return. When I send a message to someone else, they aren't
getting it.

Sunbelt also suggested doing a System Restore, which I already did a couple
days ago.

After furious head scratching, Jeff asked:

| "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:
|
|| 1. Disable e-mail scanning in your AV.
|| 2. Disable e-mail scanning in your firewall.
||
|| --
|| Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
||
|| Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
|| ALWAYS post your Outlook version.
|| How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375
||
||
|| After furious head scratching, Jeff asked:
||
||| An interesting development with email today. Incoming email arrives
||| with no problem - same as usual. When I go to send an email, I
||| click on the Send/Receive button and the email appears to go. I
||| get no error message, and the message shows up in the Sent Items
||| folder. However, I've found out that the emails are not going out
||| to their recipients. I've tried sending a test message to myself,
||| and it doesn't come back. This happens with new emails and replies
||| to emails I've received. It appears that no outgoing mail of any
||| kind is leaving my computer. I contacted my ISP, who had me delete
||| my account settings and re-enter them from scratch. Nothing. I'm
||| using XP Pro and Outlook. Sunbelt Personal Firewall and Vipre
||| antivirus/antispyware. Suggestions would be welcome - thanks in
||| advance.
|
| I've tried disabling anything to do with email in both the firewall
| and antivirus software - no luck. I have a support request out to
| Sunbelt to see if this is a known issue before doing any
| uninstall/reinstall of their product. I was really hoping for a
| reply today, but maybe tomorrow.

 

[Jeff]

Have you tried using a Search folder to see if an errant rule is moving mail
to an unintended location?

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
ALWAYS post your Outlook version.
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375




After furious head scratching, Jeff asked:

| "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:
|
|| 1. Disable e-mail scanning in your AV.
|| 2. Disable e-mail scanning in your firewall.
||
|| --
|| Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
||
|| Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
|| ALWAYS post your Outlook version.
|| How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375
||
||
|| After furious head scratching, Jeff asked:
||
||| An interesting development with email today. Incoming email arrives
||| with no problem - same as usual. When I go to send an email, I
||| click on the Send/Receive button and the email appears to go. I
||| get no error message, and the message shows up in the Sent Items
||| folder. However, I've found out that the emails are not going out
||| to their recipients. I've tried sending a test message to myself,
||| and it doesn't come back. This happens with new emails and replies
||| to emails I've received. It appears that no outgoing mail of any
||| kind is leaving my computer. I contacted my ISP, who had me delete
||| my account settings and re-enter them from scratch. Nothing. I'm
||| using XP Pro and Outlook. Sunbelt Personal Firewall and Vipre
||| antivirus/antispyware. Suggestions would be welcome - thanks in
||| advance.
|
| I've tried disabling anything to do with email in both the firewall
| and antivirus software - no luck. I have a support request out to
| Sunbelt to see if this is a known issue before doing any
| uninstall/reinstall of their product. I was really hoping for a
| reply today, but maybe tomorrow.

I looked for any mail rule that might be sending my email off into the
unknown, but there was nothing suspicious

I heard back from Sunbelt - they said if disabling their software did not
result in my mail being sent, then this indicates to them that the issue is
not with their product.

They suggested I do a "diagnostic start-up", with none of the start-up
programs loading. I did this, and the result was Outlook not being able to
send OR receive mail (messages about not being able to connect to the
server). I also had no internet access. I have no idea if this is
significant or not... I put things back the way they were, and didn't
explore this avenue any further because, to tell the truth, I'm getting
really discouraged with this whole problem.

That being said, I checked email a short time ago, and did receive a test
email back that was sent using the Tools>Email Accounts>...Test Account
Settings feature. I tested the settings again, and received another reply
from this. However, when I try to send myself any kind of message, I get
nothing in return. When I send a message to someone else, they aren't
getting it.

Sunbelt also suggested doing a System Restore, which I already did a couple
days ago.