Extremely slow email delivery

[Guest]

My Outlook XP just started gathering and sending email at a snail's pace. It collects about 50 bytes per minute from the server (POP3 at my ISP). The CPU is just loafing and the network monitor shows just a few little spikes here and there. If I go to another machine on the same network in my house, I can read email from the same ISP and account very quickly. I upgraded the problematic machine to Outllook 2003 but that has the same symptoms.
I have deleted all extraneous email from all folders and I scanned for viruses. Has anyone seen this problem?

Thanks in advance,
Chiefley

 

[Roady]

This is most likely not a problem with Outlook then but with your network
configuration. The one thing in Outlook you could try is recreating (do not
copy) the mail profile in Control Panel-> Mail-> button Show Profiles.

For your network connection you could start with;
-check your ip-settings. If from a DHCP server; release and refresh the
IP-address manually
-checking the physical connection; cable and networkcard (replace them if
possible)
-re-install TCP/IP on the machine

--
Roady
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-----

My Outlook XP just started gathering and sending email at a snail's pace.

It collects about 50 bytes per minute from the server (POP3 at my ISP). The
CPU is just loafing and the network monitor shows just a few little spikes
here and there. If I go to another machine on the same network in my house,
I can read email from the same ISP and account very quickly. I upgraded
the problematic machine to Outllook 2003 but that has the same symptoms.

I have deleted all extraneous email from all folders and I scanned for

viruses. Has anyone seen this problem?

 

[Guest]

Roady
Thanks for the quick response. I recreated the Outlook profile, reacquired the IT using ipconfig, rebooted, etc, invoked "repair" on Office, all with no change in Outlook performance. It sits on the first of 33 messages or so and moves a few dozen bytes in 5 minutes. Sending email has the same problem.

I had this problem a week ago, but it seem to clear up immediately when I went through the email folders and deleted all unwanted email and then compacted the folders. But now the problem has reappeared only after a few days

The machine is otherwise very fast on the internet and cable modem. Speed tests report download bandwidth in the megabit range as usual. This machine is connected to the same router as others that have Outlook performing very well, even into the same ISP and email account. Both the bad and good machine are running WinXP/Pro and Office 2003

The network monitor shows a little blip from time to time as the byte count ticks away every two minutes or so adding a few dozen more bytes to the transfer.

Is there any logging of debugging I can invoke somewhere

Regards
Chiefle

 

[Roady]

How is the rest of the network connection for that machine? The POP3
download speed has been optimized in Outlook 2003 (especially compared to
Outlook 2002) so that shouldn't be it. Are you running a firewall or
virusscanner? Try disabling these and uncheck any integration that it could
have with Office and/or Outlook.

Have you tried re-installing TCP-IP?

--
Roady
www.sparnaaij.net
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Also Outlook FAQ, How To's, Downloads and more...

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-Add Sound To Your E-mail

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-----

Roady,
Thanks for the quick response. I recreated the Outlook profile,

reacquired the IT using ipconfig, rebooted, etc, invoked "repair" on Office,
all with no change in Outlook performance. It sits on the first of 33
messages or so and moves a few dozen bytes in 5 minutes. Sending email has
the same problem.

I had this problem a week ago, but it seem to clear up immediately

when I went through the email folders and deleted all unwanted email and
then compacted the folders. But now the problem has reappeared only after a
few days.

The machine is otherwise very fast on the internet and cable modem.

Speed tests report download bandwidth in the megabit range as usual. This
machine is connected to the same router as others that have Outlook
performing very well, even into the same ISP and email account. Both the
bad and good machine are running WinXP/Pro and Office 2003.

The network monitor shows a little blip from time to time as the byte

count ticks away every two minutes or so adding a few dozen more bytes to
the transfer.

 

[Guest]

Roady,
Thanks again or your quick response. The machine with the Outlook problem is very fast on the Internet for all other uses. Also, all other machines share the same router/firewall, antivirus software (McAffee) and their Outlook performance is very fast, even on the same ISP and mail account.

The problem is so severe, that I am sure it has nothing to do with the relative speed of Outlook 2003 for pop3 email. This same machine was performing very well for months before this started happening.

Now that I cleared my pending messages using another machine, the bad machine works well enough to send email through one account and receive it through another, so its hard to tell if disabling the virus protection has an effect on it. I will shut off the email and let some more spam build up on the ISP and try the experiment again. Thanks again for your help.

Regards,
Chiefley

I am using

 

[Roady]

You're welcome! Feel to come back anytime when the problem re-occurs

--
Roady
www.sparnaaij.net
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Also Outlook FAQ, How To's, Downloads and more...

Questions of the month:
-Color Code Your E-Mail Advanced
-Add Sound To Your E-mail

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mailbox!
www.sparnaaij.net

-----

Roady,
Thanks again or your quick response. The machine with the Outlook

problem is very fast on the Internet for all other uses. Also, all other
machines share the same router/firewall, antivirus software (McAffee) and
their Outlook performance is very fast, even on the same ISP and mail
account.

The problem is so severe, that I am sure it has nothing to do with the

relative speed of Outlook 2003 for pop3 email. This same machine was
performing very well for months before this started happening.

Now that I cleared my pending messages using another machine, the bad

machine works well enough to send email through one account and receive it
through another, so its hard to tell if disabling the virus protection has
an effect on it. I will shut off the email and let some more spam build up
on the ISP and try the experiment again. Thanks again for your help.

 

[Guest]

Roady,
This problem just won't go away. I have deinstalled the Spam Bully software and all McAfee virus protection. None of it has an effect on this glacially slow email deliver (incoming or outgoing). My symptoms again:

- Windows XP/Pro, Outlook 2003
- Machine is very fast on the network for all other uses.
- Machine shares the same router to the same cable modem as other machines on the subnet.
- Other machines on the subnet send/receive email fast to the same ISP and mailbox.
- The problematic machine sits there with a message like:
"Receiving message 1 of 11 (1.02 KB of 195KB)"
- It takes about 5 minutes for a few more KB to come in.
- In the meantime, the machine is responsive as usual and Task Manager shows almost no cpu activity or network activity being used by Outlook.

Referring to the status message above, if I go to another machine and read those 11 messages, it appears that when I fire up the problematic machine, it will read the next email messages reasonably fast as they arrive over time. Its almost seems like the slowdown is related to the backlog of email. Is there some log I can look at showing the pop3 exchanges and timing? Thanks in advance.

Regards
Chiefley

 

[Guest]

I had the same unbearably slow email and lots of timeout errors - as I read these many messages on slow mail (about the first dozen posts), it occurred to me that maybe my email account was messed up - after trying a few things to no avail, I remembered that PC-cillin had forced some changes so it could intercept the mail. So, I changed back to the original config and it seems to fetch the mail quickly and without errors after several tries.

 

[Guest]

Tom
Thanks for the response. I think you are suggesting that my virus protection software is slowing it down. I uninstalled every spam blocker and virus program I had on here and it didnt change the problem

Here is some new info as of today. I found that Outlook 2003 takes forever when you invoke the Open/Outlook Data File... dialog and then try to navigate the folder hierarchy. It was so slow, I thought it might have locked up, but after about a minute, the folders pulldown came back with the folder tree. Clicking on any of the folders in the tree, caused the same result. In all of this, the CPU is idling like nothing is happening and the disk light is off

It seems to me my Outlook is having trouble accessing the file system in some cases

Regard
Chiefley

 

[Guest]

I would URGE YOU TO TRY RESETTING THE EMAIL SETTINGS, anyway - I have not had a problem since I did that - mail is fast and no timeout errors (I have Outlook 2002) - but, I just looked and PC-cillin has changed my settings back but I am still having no problems - I can only guess that something had gotten corrupted or max'd out and by resetting the variables, I flushed something out (similar to rebooting). Anyway, and as an example, I use roadrunner and my orignal settings vs after PC-cillin changed them:

.................................... original ............................ after pc-cillin
user name................... tsullivan3.......................... tsullivan3/pop-server.dc.rr.com
incoming pop3 server... pop-server.dc.rr.com ........ localhost

So, I am ok now after resetting to my original settings even though I later started PC-cillin which changed them back. Hope you try resetting to your original settings