I've been having problems with e-mail & connection to dsl (SBC). I'm using the SBC browser, which disappears occasionally, but I'm having a lot of trouble with e-mail. Is there a bullet-proof browser/e-mail.
I'm using Outlook Express for e-mail (I can't get it to work anywhere else). I also have Internet Explorer. Any help with settings might be useful, but if there's anything better I'd appreciate it. I've been to download.com, but don't know what to try. I've had it working better in the past without the SBC software, but that's the only way I could get it to work at all (reload the SBC disk). BTW, my PC is less than a year old & isn't a cheap one. I'd like to avoid calling Dell or SBC & talking with someone from India.
Thanks
Dave
PS I also have good anti-virus, anti-spyware...Norton & Spybot
The mozilla project puts out a nice browser and email client. It is free to download and has much better security and virus protection than IE/outlook and much better features as well. You can get the Mozilla browser which has a browser and email client (similar to outlook) combined, or download the latest-greatest Firefox browser & Thuderbird email client. I personally use mozilla myself, so I can't really tell you much about F.Fox or T-Bird, but they are far better choices than IE & Outlook which are virus/hacker cesspools. I am not sure what problems you are having with SBC's service, but maybe you can post more information about what's happening. As a general rule, SBC or anyone else's (i.e. AOL) browser is unecessary and can be counter productive, especially if your email address book or bookmarks are locked in their browser and can't be exported when you switch internet providers at some future date..
the URL is
www.mozilla.org
Thanks & is it the Mozilla 1.7 you're recommending?
Dave
I downloaded the Mozilla, and still had trouble with e-mail. I called SBC and spoke with our Indian allies....after an hour or so she came to the conclusion that Outlook Express is corrupted and needs to be uninstalled. The Mozilla browser is peachy so far...a bit quicker than Microsoft Explorer IMO. The lady from India (SBC) said SBC doesn't support Mozilla, so I'm using SBC for e-mail...whatever works.
I got a big blue screen with white type about...had to shut down Windows to save the day. I hope I don't see that anymore. I went for a Windows Update & they had a Critical software thing. Hope my problems are behind me...another 10 hours in the "unbilled" column.
Dave
A disappearing browser indicates a programming fault took place somewhere. The blue screen with the white letters (the infamous "blue screen of death") indicates a similar fault took place in a critical system module or driver. It could be a hardware problem if many different things are affected. It may be the case that you have some kind of memory hardware problem that can affect whatever program happens to get located in that part of memory. Overheating components could be a cause of such a problem. Take note how long the computer has been on when these things happen to see if there is any pattern (such as it never happens within teh first 20 minutes).
Be sure your virus and spyware protection is up to date to this very day (a couple months ago isn't enough). Then call Dell and ask if they can provide you with some memory test software or other suggestions to deal figure out if there might be a memory problem.
The free Firefox/Thunderbird browser and email client should work fine with SBC as long as the correct setup is done. Since SBC doesn't support those programs, they can't tell you how to set it up. But if you can get them to tell you some specific data like "which protocol? POP3 or IMAP?" and "what hostname for outgoing SMTP?" and "what hostname for picking up email by POP3/IMAP?" you might be able to set up your own accounts on it. Any local computer geeks in you area might be able to help with this.
Mozilla Thunderbird is very good I highly recommend it!
So far uninstalling Outlook Express seems to have fixed things. If it's a memory problem, would a good test be to open up page after page of different websites???
Thanks for the tip on Thunderbird, but I'm not downloading anything new until I'm sure everything is OK.
Dave
Opening up lots of pages, and doing lots of stuff (nothing critical with important files) would have a better chance of triggering the memory problem. It may be that spot of memory only fails at certain times, and with certain data. Or it may be just entirely random. But increased usage increases the probability of it happening.