Evidence of my brain (CPU) slowing down is that it took me at least 3 minutes to remember 'mitzvah, one of the few Yiddish words I know. After a friend, who taught me the word, called me and told me her mail program receives incoming mail but could not send anything out(she uses Eudora as do I). It reminded me of a German Shepherd we once had who was a fear biter. He let everyone into the house, with no problem, but bit anyone trying to leave. Since my Eudora had no problems and I had never before seen the error message hers showed, I was stumped as was the friend who had accompanied me, a guy who built his own 64-bit, Vista computer.
First, though she had Used AVG and cleaned it out a few hours ago, we took a lot more garbage off her computer. All the junk that had come with it when new, the games for trial, and Weatherbug (known to be a real clutterbug, were removed. Wild Tangent, being like English Ivy and cockroaches that can never be totally eradicated, will come back soon enough. These efforts produced a bit more speed . Finally, while uninstalling, I realized I had inadvertently removed the driver to her scanner/printer combo so it took us a bit to find the proper driver and get it back for her.
While we were cleaning house, I kept puzzling as to what might be giving the strange message. It was set to read smtp for outgoing mail, but the error message kept saying that the smtp.q. was timing out. Most confusing was that the error message subject did not match the settings.
Not wishing to torture readers to the degree we had felt frustrated, after more than an hour of chasing our figurative tails, we finally came across info on the ISP's site that some kind soul had written. Back to the mail program, (trying to work all the while with a mouse that was set up left handedly, with reversed mouse buttons) we checked the Eudora setup for a time that was exponential. Everything was proper. The error message kept translating the smtp to smtp.q.(ISP). Blessings on Google for trying but it wasn't much of a help.
The owner had called her ISP tech support, who told her it can't have been the ISP's fault, it had to be her mail program. Stupidly trusting that the tech support knew more than we did (don't fall into that trap, reader)and, after spending an hour or so checking out lots of things, on FAQ on Eudora and then on her ISP, it showed that the ISP was showing a different port should be used than that which she had been using. Apparently her ISP changed the port without informing users... though, even if she had been informed, she would not have known what to do with the information.
So, once again, it was an anonymous user who had come to the rescue and not the experts hired and paid. Just as I have learned more about medicine from my patients and friends than from my doctor, the computer problem proved to be solved by a lay source. My firm advice to everyone is to persevere with every possibility until something finally comes of your efforts. That the steps taken can probably not be duplicated forces the hope that the same problem will never be encountered again!
That would indeed be a surprise if true. However, there will always be new problems to eat up time not allotted, frustrate the user who had long since lost her USER FRIENDLY button, and wonders why life used to be simple, even if dull, many years ago.
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