Windows XP and Outlook Express 6.0

Can Outlook Express be reinstalled without losing any e-mail or address
book? My sister can receive but not sent e-mail via Roadrunner with OE
6.0. Roadrunner tech support says everything is set up correctly but
it still pops up saying it timed out connecting to the SMTP server.
He said it had to be an OE problem and it needed to be reinstalled.
I have never heard of reinstalling OE. Does this make sense?

"Dennis" wrote in message
.. .
Can Outlook Express be reinstalled without losing any e-mail or address
book? My sister can receive but not sent e-mail via Roadrunner with OE
6.0. Roadrunner tech support says everything is set up correctly but
it still pops up saying it timed out connecting to the SMTP server.
He said it had to be an OE problem and it needed to be reinstalled.
I have never heard of reinstalling OE. Does this make sense?



OE is a part of XP so it cannot really be reinstalled unless you reinstall
XP.

If you can get your sister to copy the error message and you paste in in
here, we can probably do something. A time-out error can have many
origins, such as e-mail scanning. Turn it off.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP Oct. 1, 2004 ~ Sept. 30, 2010
Imperial Beach, CA

Dennis wrote:
Can Outlook Express be reinstalled without losing any e-mail or address
book? My sister can receive but not sent e-mail via Roadrunner with OE
6.0. Roadrunner tech support says everything is set up correctly but
it still pops up saying it timed out connecting to the SMTP server.
He said it had to be an OE problem and it needed to be reinstalled.
I have never heard of reinstalling OE. Does this make sense?

A tool I use, is Wireshark, a packet sniffer. It allows you to
watch packets sent and received by the computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireshark

If you go to "View : Name Resolution" and turn on all the
options there, instead of useless numbers under Source and Destination,
you can get symbolic addresses (like "roadrunner.com"). That will help
you debug the problem, figure out when Outlook Express is trying to
send to the SMTP server, and so on.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...screenshot.png

A user can even capture a log, save it as a file, then send it to a
friend, and have them open the log in their copy of Wireshark - and
reproduce the same picture on their screen. That helps, if the user
is having trouble describing what they're seeing (i.e. you're
remote debugging).

Reinstalling things seldom helps, in my opinion. The reason for that,
is if a problem is in the registry, the program uninstaller doesn't
clean it out, and upon re-installation, the program installer will
"honor" the old settings, even if they're baloney. I've never found
program re-installation, to help me that much. I'd sooner debug,
and try to figure out what is broken. And feed any "unique discoveries"
into a google search.

Paul

On 6/10/12 4:01 PM, Dennis wrote:
Can Outlook Express be reinstalled without losing any e-mail or address
book? My sister can receive but not sent e-mail via Roadrunner with OE
6.0. Roadrunner tech support says everything is set up correctly but
it still pops up saying it timed out connecting to the SMTP server.
He said it had to be an OE problem and it needed to be reinstalled.
I have never heard of reinstalling OE. Does this make sense?

I haven't messed with OE in years, but you may be interested in trying this:

Create a system restore point.

Open OE.

Export, save, whatever the OE options are to get all of her emails out
of OE. Make sure that whatever you choose will let you get her emails
back into OE. I think all of the emails are in some kind of *.pst file,
so search for that also and make a copy of it somewhere.

Close OE.

Go to Control Panel Add or Remove Programs.

Select Add/Remove Windows Components.

Uncheck OE and follow the prompts.

Do a coldboot.

Now add OE back into the system.

Do not import her email!!!!

Set up her email account and see if you can send email.

If she can, then import her email.

Reboot.

See if she can send email. If not, there's a problem in her email
somewhere, not with OE itself.


No guarantees or promises here. But maybe worth a shot to you.




--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 12.0
Thunderbird 12.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.2.2

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 18:01:15 -0400, Dennis wrote:

Can Outlook Express be reinstalled without losing any e-mail or address
book? My sister can receive but not sent e-mail via Roadrunner with OE
6.0. Roadrunner tech support says everything is set up correctly but
it still pops up saying it timed out connecting to the SMTP server.
He said it had to be an OE problem and it needed to be reinstalled.
I have never heard of reinstalling OE. Does this make sense?

It's probably easiest to just enable Error Logging in OE so you can
see what's happening. In OE, go to Tools, Options, Maintenance to find
the option.

More details here, including where to find the log. If you don't know
what a log entry means, copy and paste it here and someone will tell
you.
http://email.about.com/od/outlookexpresstroubles/qt/Log_SMTP_Traffic_in_Windows_Live_Mail_Windows_Mail _OE.htm

Ken Springer wrote:
On 6/10/12 4:01 PM, Dennis wrote:
Can Outlook Express be reinstalled without losing any e-mail or address
book? My sister can receive but not send e-mail via Roadrunner with OE
6.0. Roadrunner tech support says everything is set up correctly but
it still pops up saying it timed out connecting to the SMTP server.
He said it had to be an OE problem and it needed to be reinstalled.
I have never heard of reinstalling OE. Does this make sense?

I haven't messed with OE in years, but you may be interested in trying
this:

Create a system restore point.

Open OE.

Export, save, whatever the OE options are to get all of her emails out
of OE. Make sure that whatever you choose will let you get her emails
back into OE. I think all of the emails are in some kind of *.pst file,
so search for that also and make a copy of it somewhere.

I think OE uses *.dbx files to store the email (and newsgroup messages), not
..pst files. I think *.pst files were from Outlook, but I don't use Outlook
so I can't comment on that. So the way to save emails is to copy all the
..dbx files.

And as I recall, if you delete the "folders.dbx" file, it will rebuild all
the mail folders (if you need to do this) when you open OE, although you
will may still need to resort the folders and their hierarchy the way you
originally had it in OE if you decide to do this).

At any rate, export and import may not be necesary, so long as you're just
sticking with OE, so I'm not sure all of this below will be necessary.


Close OE.

Go to Control Panel Add or Remove Programs.

Select Add/Remove Windows Components.

Uncheck OE and follow the prompts.

Do a coldboot.

Now add OE back into the system.

Do not import her email!!!!

Set up her email account and see if you can send email.

If she can, then import her email.

Reboot.

See if she can send email. If not, there's a problem in her email
somewhere, not with OE itself.


No guarantees or promises here. But maybe worth a shot to you.




--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 12.0
Thunderbird 12.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.2.2

"Ken Springer" wrote in message
...
On 6/10/12 4:01 PM, Dennis wrote:
Can Outlook Express be reinstalled without losing any e-mail or
address
book? My sister can receive but not sent e-mail via Roadrunner with
OE
6.0. Roadrunner tech support says everything is set up correctly but
it still pops up saying it timed out connecting to the SMTP server.
He said it had to be an OE problem and it needed to be reinstalled.
I have never heard of reinstalling OE. Does this make sense?

I haven't messed with OE in years, but you may be interested in trying
this:
snip

Go to Control Panel Add or Remove Programs.

Select Add/Remove Windows Components.

Uncheck OE and follow the prompts.

snip

Nope. All that does is remove access to Outlook Express from the Start
Menu... in other words it just removes the Start menu shortcuts to OE.
It does NOT remove Outlook Express.
--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+

On 6/10/2012 6:01 PM, Dennis wrote:
Can Outlook Express be reinstalled without losing any e-mail or address
book? My sister can receive but not sent e-mail via Roadrunner with OE
6.0. Roadrunner tech support says everything is set up correctly but
it still pops up saying it timed out connecting to the SMTP server.
He said it had to be an OE problem and it needed to be reinstalled.
I have never heard of reinstalling OE. Does this make sense?


Ok, thanks for all the suggestions. I'm not sure when I will be back to
her house but I will get more info and post it If I don't get it working...

"Dennis" wrote in message
.. .

Can Outlook Express be reinstalled without losing any e-mail or address
book? My sister can receive but not sent e-mail via Roadrunner with OE
6.0. Roadrunner tech support says everything is set up correctly but
it still pops up saying it timed out connecting to the SMTP server.
He said it had to be an OE problem and it needed to be reinstalled.
I have never heard of reinstalling OE. Does this make sense?

One of the possible causes is the Server Ports used in
/ Accounts / Properties / Advanced.
When I started with wireless broadband, I could not send
email, and eventually called the ISP who recommended
a diffent (non-default) port for outgoing email. This worked OK.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)