Can't download emails w/o rebooting after disabling internet

[artie]

I'm using Vista 32bit Home Premium and Microsoft Outlook 2003. iNet Protector can be running w/o any problems until I disable the internet access once. After re-enabling, I cannot download any emails until I reboot the computer. I've tried putting Outlook and AVG antivirus in the allowed programs list - didn't help. On my other machine, using Windows XP and Outlook Express, it works perfectly. Any ideas? This makes the program useless to me because if I have to reboot every time, I might as well just password protect all user accounts and log off, defeating the purpose of this program.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Karlis]

Yes, this is most likely because of a misbehavior of an anti-virus software or some utility program, e.g. firewall, proxy, anti-spam etc. Most likely what happens is - you have some program or utility or service that is related to receiving e-mail (that sits between outlook and internet). Once Internet is disabled this utility program hangs and becomes unable to perform the task.

I do have Vista and Outlook and it works just fine, so this can't be a general problem.

First thing to try is - when this happens, close Outlook, launch the Task Manager, locate outlook.exe, end the task and then re-launch Outlook to see whether this helps. If this helps, the problem lies in a software that integrates with Outlook, probably a plugin.

Otherwise, to diagnose the problem, the only way is to uninstall anti-virus, any third-party firewall and and third-party anti-spam or similar e-mail related utilities one by one, restarting the computer each time and checking whether the problem persists. This will help you diagnose the utility that messes with e-mail and hangs when internet is blocked.

[artie]

You're right, the problem was with Desklook, a program I use to display my Outlook info on my desktop at all times. The only way I found to work around this is to enable (unblock) email at all times. While this is not the ultimate solution, I guess I can get away with having others in my household read my emails. Thanks.

[Karlis]

Thank you for getting back and letting us know. I appreciate it.