On Thu, 2 Jul 2020 at 15:01:24, VanguardLH wrote:
KenK wrote:

I'm having a lot of annoying problems with my ancient Gmail app.

We're _assuming_ you mean, you're using gmail, and are using some
software to access it (other than a web browser which would mean you're
using their webmail interface). If your email provider is someone
_other_ than gmail (your email address _doesn't_ have @gmail in it), you
need to tell us that.

Assuming you _are_ talking about gmail, I won't add much to what VLH has
said.
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Most Win32 programs have a menu, and in that menu it has a Help entry,
and under Help is usually an About entry. That's where you look to
determine which version of a program (not app) that you are running.

Perhaps you mean you are using a web browser (unidentified, too) to
connect to gmail.com and you are using their webmail client (aka web
app). In that case, "lot of annoying problems" gives no details for
anyone else to troubleshoot.
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I tried Thunderbird. It's better, but annoyingly it fails to send my
message about a third of the time. I have to save the message entry
screen and reload T-Bird. It usually works then but still annoying.

Only fairly recent versions of TB can do the sort of authentication
encryption that gmail like you to use, and I don't know if that includes
the ones that run on XP (up to 52 point something).

You _can_ use older TBs - or other clients that also don't do the right
sort of authentication encryption - with gmail; you just have to go into
their web interface, and tick a box that says something like "allow less
secure clients". There are rumours that they tend to untick that box (i.
e. require the encryption) on you after a while; I don't use gmail so
don't know how true that is.
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Also, many mail servers have upped their encryption protocol required to
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So, no matter what e-mail client you use, you may not be able to connect
to a mail server because your old OS doesn't have the minimally required
encryption support by the server.

Another way to continue using an old client you're fond of but that
doesn't do what the server now wants, is to use an intermediate piece of
software that provides it: the people in the Turnpike 'group mostly use
one called stunnel, but I think there are others. You then point your
client at this other software rather than the mail servers, and point
this other software at the mail servers.

Yet another way is to use one of the antivirus prog.s - I _think_ it's
Avast, but I'm not sure about that - and for once let it do email
scanning. (Normally, if you have a good AV software anyway, email
scanning is _mostly_ a waste of time.) That particular AV does the
necessary encryption as a side-effect.

I think, though, in text either I or VLH have snipped, you said the
problem only occurs about a third of the time; I can't imagine the
encryption or authentication problems we know of doing that: they'd
either stop it working all the time, or not. So your problem may be
something else.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The motto of the Royal Society is: 'Take nobody's word for it'. Scepticism has
value. - Brian Cox, RT 2015/3/14-20