Outlook express and Bt internet e mail

Question

I have had bt internet for many years, probably 12 years. I have always used outlook express to download and view my e mails. However, about 6 months ago I started having error messages which I will post below. The symptoms are these. If I have several e mails sitting on the server, it will download say 3 of them and not download the rest, an error message will come up. If I try send and receive again it will download the 3 same duplicate e mailes and then an error message will come up. I have one main account and 3 sub accounts, the same proble occurs on all three accounts. Other times the e mails will download to OE no problem
Message number 3 could not be retrieved. Account: 'mail.btinternet.com', Server: 'mail.btinternet.com', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR inactivity timeout', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800420CD
Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible causes for this include server problems, network problems, or a long period of inactivity. Account: 'mail.btinternet.com', Server: 'mail.btinternet.com', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Error Number: 0x800CCC0F
Does any one have a solution to this problem, it's seems that it's a common problem when I do a search on google.
Roger L

Answer 1

gw3xjc wrote:
When I talked to the BT lady who took control over my pc she did not seem to want to know anything about the fact it was a common fault. What has changed?????It only started happening about 6 months ago. I just can't use the e mail now unless I go onto Yahoo and look at it directly, it's a real pain. Any suggestions, is it only applicable to bt/yahoo, would it be any different if I change providers or am I going completely down the wrong track, would it work better with Outlook.
Rog
gw3xjc, 
There is several variants of this problem.
The most common is due to a slowish internet connection and largish emails usually with attachments. The slower the connection the smaller the emails that cause the problem. 
What happens is the server times out prematurely trying to download the largish email and as the transaction is not completed all previous emails in that transaction are not marked as having been downloaded so they are downloaded again when you next do a send/receive.
(If you have different symptoms please elaborate)
There are a few ways that you can possibly alleviate it and/or cure it.
1. A cure has been suggested in this thread in the last few posts:
http://community.bt.com/t5/Other-BB-Queries/Windows-Mail-Server-Terminating-Connection-when-download...
2.  You can increase the server timeout value using the advanced section of the Account properties in OE.
     Also stop OE from checking for emails automatically and send/receive manually.
3.  You can set up a message rule in OE that checks the size of the email and if bigger than a value you specify Not download it from the server.    This should allow all smaller emails to be downloaded.   You of course need to log on via webmail and check the large emails that are left on the server periodically.
4. You can try other providers eg Yahoo.co.uk  (non BT variant and not yahoo.com) Gmail etc that do not seem as prone to the problem.
5. Using Outlook does not help and probably makes the problem worse.