DIY "guide" to resolve the POP3 error

[Antonio_f2s]

Hi all,

I have put together a little "guide" to help you resolve the pop3 error that some of you are getting in your mail clients when trying to download your emails. Before I go on, I need to say well done to Bikerdave55 for finding some of this stuff on its own and posting it to help everybody else in a similar situation.

I must start by saying that if you are not confident in following the instructions you can send me a PM with the email address and password and I will fix it for you (I promise that I will not be using this information to take over the world ). If after following the instructions you still getting the error message, then, I am afraid that you need to send me your email address and password for me to fix it or you need to call the technical support line and they will be able to fix it for you.

Disclaimer : If you follow the instructions below it is because you want to follow them, I am not forcing you to take any of the steps below and you are taking full responsibility for your actions.

If you are using outlook express as your pop3 client and you are affected by this error, you would be getting a message similar to:

Message number 1 could not be retrieved. Account: 'Freedom2Surf', Server: 'inmail.f2s.com', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR [SYS/PERM] Could not read message file', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800420CD."

To resolve this issue please follow the steps below:


1. - Access you inbox my webmail. Even if you are getting an error with your mail client, you are going to be able to access your webmail account.

2. - Locate message number 1 as per the error (please be aware that message 1 could be any number)

3. - Delete message 1 and close webmail

4. - Start Outlook express again and try to send and receive. If you are lucky the error message should disappear. If this is the case, well done, your issue has been sorted. If still receiving the message then you need to move to step 5.

5. - Close outlook express and open a command prompt (go to start menu, run and in the dialog box write cmd and press ok. This will open a black window in your screen.

6. - Type telnet inmail.f2s.com 110 and press enter, you should have now the following line in the screen +OK POP3 Ready imap2.freedom2surf.net 0001c3a3

7. - Type user xxxx-f2s-com and press enter (you need to replace the xxxx for the first part of your email address) you should have now the following extra line in your screen +OKxxxx-f2s-com set, mate

8. - Type pass XXXXXXX and press enter (replace the X for your password) you should have now the following extra line in your screen +OK Mailbox locked and ready.

9. - Type list and press enter. You should now have a list of all the mails in your inbox and will look similar to this:

+OK scan listing follows
1 2953

The first number is the message number and the second number is the size.

10. - Now we are going to try to delete this message. Type dele 1 and press enter. You should get the message +OK message deleted and message is gone.

11. - Type quit and press enter to close the telnet connection and close the black screen. Open outlook express and do a send/receive. The error should be gone but if still there, then you need to contact support.

If you are not using outlook express it is unlikely that you will be able to get an error advising of the message number. If you are using thunderbird or similar you may be getting a message like:

The RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving a message. Mail server inmail.f2s.com responded [SYS/PERM] could not read message file.

This error does not show the message (or messages) causing the issue so it could take you some time to find the correct message. You could, to try to get more info, setup outlook express (remembering to leave a copy of the messages in the server) and you should be able to find the message number this way. As I said earlier on this “guide”, you always can ask me or our support department for help if you don’t want to give this a go.

If any of you spot any mistakes please let me know and I'll edit.... it is late and I am going to bed.

May be an admin could make this a sticky at least while we are having mail issues?

[SkyUser]

*stickied* And thanks for typing it all out Antonio.

[anna]

I probably won't attempt this myself Antonio. Nevertheless, I think it very helpful that you took the time to post this.

Thank you very much.

[Ferret42]

Vista users
Telnet client is not installed by default, so you will have to install it.

Click Start then select Control Panel.

Select Programs and Features.

Select Turn Windows features on or off.

Select the Telnet Client option.

Click OK.

A dialog box will appear to confirm installation. The telnet command should now be available.

To run telnet, Click start then in start search type telnet

[monica]

Message number 1 could not be retrieved. Account: 'inmail.rollings.f2s.com', Server: 'inmail.rollings.f2s.com', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR [SYS/PERM] Could not read message file', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800420CD

Every time I log into my email the above messages shows up.
Yesterday I phone tech support at F2S, held on for 1 hour, got not answer.
Why are there so many problems with emails lately?
I do not have the webmail access that is being discussed here. How do I do that?
Thanks for any advice

[monica]

By the way, I am new to this site and I'm not sure how to PM Antioni with my email address and password.

[Justin]

Just click this link:
http://www.tiscaliuser.net/forums/pr...o=newpm&u=4499

[monica]

Thank you Justin. Much appreciated.

Monica

[Old struggler]

Originally Posted by Antonio_f2s

Hi all,

[FONT=Arial][SIZE=3]I have put together a little "guide" to help you resolve the pop3 error that some of you are getting in your mail clients when trying to download your emails.

<snip>

Antonio, you are a star! The telnet method worked just fine, even though I don't use Outlook Express, so I just deleted message no. 1.

The email download was rather slow, but maybe that's because it's now just a week since it last worked, so perhaps it's a bit rusty.

Why the f2s "engineer" who was dealing with my complaint couldn't have done that after I supplied him with my password will probably remain a mystery for ever.

Now, it's fingers crossed that it remains OK.

Thanks also for Justin for providing the link to your post.

[Justin]

No problem Monica, I forgot to say, you can access webmail at:
https://webmail.freedom2surf.net

[Justin]

No problem Monica, I forgot to say, you can access webmail at:
https://webmail.freedom2surf.net

[Old struggler]

Originally Posted by Ferret42

Vista users
Telnet client is not installed by default, so you will have to install it.

Click Start then select Control Panel.

Select Programs and Features.

Select Turn Windows features on or off.

Select the Telnet Client option.

Click OK.

A dialog box will appear to confirm installation. The telnet command should now be available.

To run telnet, Click start then in start search type telnet

Thanks for that too, Ferret.