Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Outlook Express is making hundreds of copies

Apr 28, 2005 1:05PM PDT

of received emails. Friend with problem is using Windows ME. Has run Housecall..finds nothing. Runs AVG.Also finds nothing. Anyone have any idea of what the problem could be?She has all of the updates available for Express and ME.
Since I use neither IE or Outlook dont know what advice to give. A google search has not been too productive. Any help would be appreciated.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
All I can think of ...
Apr 28, 2005 9:01PM PDT

is that in the account properties the "leave message on server" switch is set. It still shouldn't come in repeatedly, of course, but unchecking this checkbox might be a solution. If the message is deleted on the server, it won't come again, I assume.

Page 8 to 10 of http://web.tic.ch/download/tic/Instruction%20leave%20message%20on%20server.pdf give very clear instructions on how to do this.

Hope this helps.


Kees

- Collapse -
(NT) Thanks but that's not it
Apr 29, 2005 7:59AM PDT

It was the first thing that we thought of. I think something has corrupted Outlook Express but i cannot prove this as the party is very stubborn and wont use another email program such as Thunderbird to check that out. The isp is Comcast and they insist it is a viris of somekind in spite of the fact that Housecall and Avg find nothing.

- Collapse -
In above post the (NT) came out of nowhere..there is a text
Apr 29, 2005 11:19AM PDT

message. It thanks Kees for his response but that was not the problem. It also mentions Comcast is the isp and they are insisting it is a virus of somekind...

- Collapse -
Re: That's not it.
Apr 30, 2005 4:29AM PDT

You won't blame me, I hope, for suggesting something you had thought of yourself already, if you didn't tell that you had done so.

Using another email-client for the purpose of investigation seems a very good step. I don't see why anyone could be opposed to it.

Other things you can try could be:
1) See if a repair of IE/OE helps (from Config Panel>Add and Remove).
2) See if there is any chance of an antivirus being involved. AVG, for example, has a separate option to enable an extra check of incoming emails. If so, disable that (for investigation only).
3) Use Config Panel>Add and Remove to go back to the previous version of IE. Check that. Then reinstall latest version.
4) Use (for investigation only!) an email-client (Outlook Express is a good possibility) on another machine with the same account settings. This will tell if it's a Comcast problem (unlikely).

If 4) works OK, it's rather sure that a format of the hard disk and reinstall of the OS will wipe out any possible cause not yet found. But I doubt if the "party" will like that ...

Good luck,


Kees

- Collapse -
Problem solved by user
May 1, 2005 2:35AM PDT

and since I do not have Outlook in any form on my machines I cannot confirm. But she says she found a setting in an Outlook Express "task bar" (menu?) which said delete files back to server. When this was corrected the problem stopped. Doesnt sound logical to me but I cannot confirm that such a setting exists normally or not.

I am a Windows user but have removed Outlook from both my machines as it is easy to do. Have IE for those rare sites which wont load without it.

Kees I want to thank you again for your suggestions as hopefully they will help this person do her own troubleshooting the next time something gets screwed up on her machine!

- Collapse -
"delete files back to server" ...
May 1, 2005 5:43AM PDT

is unknown to google, so it's something else, I suppose. Unless you can get her to quote the full and exact text, it will be unknown forever, I'm afraid.

Kees