An email problem.

[waynegohl]

My email account says i have 21 emails that are unread but when i want to load them it only loads to 16 and hangs. How can i find out what is making it hang so i can delete it.

Thanks.

 

[froot]

What program are you using to do this? I recently saw the exact same thing with someone's Outlook Express.... it loaded up to (16 too coincidentally) and stayed there.

 

[PsyWulf]

telnet into said server and delete the next mail in the queue ( ie 16mails that work - nr17 delete )
Net is full of how to telnet into pop3 server guides so no need for me to copy paste now

 

[waynegohl]

i am with telkom and i use seamonkey but nothing is happening. let me see what this telnet is about.

 

[murraybiscuit]

don't you have webmail?
try that or try headers only in your mail client first.
then try telnet if you have to.

 

[thisgeek]

telnet server.name 110

Once connected:

user [username]
pass [password]

list

You'll be given a list of emails. It won't be very helpful. The list consists of the message number, and then the size, in bytes.

1 122121
2 2322000
3 1234111

To get an idea of what a particular mail is, use top. Syntax is top [id] [num lines]

top 1 5
+OK
Received: from xxx.xxx.co.za (196.xxx.xxx.xxx) by
 EMLPRD01.xxxx.co.za (196.xxx.xxx.xxx) with Microsoft SMTP Server id
 8.1.336.0; Thu, 1 Oct 2009 08:40:05 +0200
Received: from mailgate.xxxxx.co.za (unverified [196.xxx.xxx.xxx]) by
 SNDMSW2.xxx.co.za (SMTPRS 5.2.9) with ESMTP id
 <[email protected]> for
 <[email protected]>; Thu, 1 Oct 2009 08:39:54 +0200
Received: from spmler2.mail.xxxx.com ([194.xxx.xxx.xxx])  by
 mailgate07.xxxx.co.za with ESMTP; 01 Oct 2009 08:40:15 +0200
Received: from spmlir2.mail.xxxx.com (spmlir2-2.mail.xxxx.com [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx])
        by spmler2.mail.xxxxxx.com (8.14.2/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n916doYM000615
for
 <[email protected]>; Thu, 1 Oct 2009 07:39:50 +0100
Received: from spmlir2.mail.xxxxx.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by
 spmlir2.mail.xxxx.com (8.14.2/8.12.10) with ESMTP id n916dXrI002574     for
 <[email protected]>; Thu, 1 Oct 2009 07:39:33 +0100
Received: from xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.com ([xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx])     by
 spmlir2.mail.xxxx.com (8.14.2/8.12.10) with ESMTP id n916dWeN002517     for
 <[email protected]>; Thu, 1 Oct 2009 07:39:32 +0100
Received: from xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.com ([xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]) by

If you want to see a bit more, increase the num lines.

To delete a mail, use dele [msg num]

dele 1

Type quit to quit.

 

[waynegohl]

ok where do i type those codes in this geek?

no murraybiscuit i am not on webmail and i have no idea what to do with this telnet stuff as i don't understand it.

my inbox says 45 or so emails but nothing is working.

 

[Drake2007]

telnet is a command line program (DOS) and not every windows pc has it.

What you can do when you don't have webmail is sign up for gmail, that will grab your email for you (with a bit of setup) from your ISP's email server.

 

[waynegohl]

hey thanks all but as i did not know what the hell i was doing i took a little of all your posts and what i did was ask my email program to download headers only and that seemed to work. i think i found the culprit.

thanks all.

 

[InTheCube]

hey thanks all but as i did not know what the hell i was doing i took a little of all your posts and what i did was ask my email program to download headers only and that seemed to work. i think i found the culprit.

thanks all.

What was the problem? I've had this happen to me before, and usually it is a corrupted / damaged email that causes problems when you try to download it. Logging in to the web interface of your email account and identifying then deleting the offending message is the usual way of solving this problem. Note that this problem doesn't happen with all Email clients. Most are able to deal with bad emails, or error cases...

 

[waynegohl]

i actually don't know what the problem was. the email was sent to my wifes account and because i had a forwarding thing on it the email came to me but would not download. after changing the my account to receive headers only and deleting that email everything seems to be ok. could it be the forwarding issue that caused the problem?