Home » Email » General Problems

Netscape Messenger or Outlook Express is acting funny, what's wrong?

  1. Problem

    While using Netscape Messenger or Outlook Express, it stopped retrieving email, started asking for a password, stopped deleting messages or just plain started acting funny.

  2. Explanation

    There are a few possible explanations:

    • The account you use to send and receive email is on the department Solaris server mail.pa.msu.edu. By default, passwords on this server are set to expire after six and a half months. If you only use OE or Messenger to check your email, you wont be warned of this and you wont be able to check your mail once your password expires.
    • In the process of checking your email on different machines, or using different methods you have left an IMAP session open on mail.pa.msu.edu. If you have logged into the mail server using telnet, ssh or rlogin and left an IMAP process running, then tried to check your email using OE or Messenger you wont be able to do things like delete messages and shuffle mail into different folders.
    • Sometimes Outlook Express does not synchronize correctly with mail.pa.msu.edu. If your P-A mailbox is open and you perform a send and recieve, recently read messages could be marked as unread again. This is a common problem, and it has been found that clicking on the "Sent Items" folder will properly mark all messages in the Inbox.
  3. Solution



Questions not covered in this FAQ? Make sure to send them in!

Last Updated:2008.06.12 by G J Perkins