• E-mail Problems with Spectrum

    From David E. Ross@nobody@nowhere.invalid to alt.comp.software.thunderbird,alt.windows7.general on Sat Jun 6 23:06:52 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)

    I have four accounts setup on my Thunderbird (plus local folders):
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    * Blogs & News Feeds
    * Eternal September (newsgroups)
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in
    an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.
    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    I have no such problems with E-mail messages through Main E-mail, RSS
    messages through Blogs & News Feeds, or newsgroup messages through
    Eternal September. I can also readily browse the Web via SeaMonkey and Firefox. I have a clock synchronization application on my PC that has
    no problem querying atomic clocks world-wide via the Internet. I use
    VLC to listen to music streaming via the Internet. I quickly connect to Sunset.net's Web server via an FTP application (My personal Web site is
    quite large). Etc, etc.

    Is anyone else having problems sending or receiving E-mail messages with Spectrum accounts?

    Followup To: alt.windows7.general
    --

    David E. Ross
    <http://www.rossde.com>

    NO, not everyone has a smart phone. My wife and I have
    "dumb cell phones" and a land-line. Neither of us can
    handle QR codes, reply to text messages, or have any
    kind of phone-based Internet connections. We can send
    and receive photos only through our desktop PCs.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to alt.windows7.general on Sun Jun 7 09:17:42 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    Am 07.06.26 um 08:06 schrieb David E. Ross:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1

    That is very old.
    Probably you will have issues with current encryption standards.

    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.

    Use telnet/ncat with the port and test connectivity.

    telnet mail.twc.com <port>
    There needs to be a message that the connection has been established.
    --
    Gru|f
    Marco

    Spam bitte an abfalleimer2001@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From J. P. Gilliver@G6JPG@255soft.uk to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Sun Jun 7 08:28:40 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 2026/6/7 7:6:52, David E. Ross wrote:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)
    []
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    []
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in
    an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.

    So it's the same server for incoming (POP) and outgoing (SMTP).

    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    _Sounds_ like Spectrum's email server(s?) are overloaded/unreliable.
    Have you asked them - especially as they're your ISP too - about it?
    (Raising a ticket or whatever means they use.)

    What happens if you ping them/it? (Run, cmd, type "ping mail.twc.com".)

    I have no such problems with E-mail messages through Main E-mail, RSS messages through Blogs & News Feeds, or newsgroup messages through
    Eternal September. I can also readily browse the Web via SeaMonkey and Firefox. I have a clock synchronization application on my PC that has
    no problem querying atomic clocks world-wide via the Internet. I use
    VLC to listen to music streaming via the Internet. I quickly connect to Sunset.net's Web server via an FTP application (My personal Web site is
    quite large). Etc, etc.

    So, basically, your broadband connection is fine, not the problem.

    Is anyone else having problems sending or receiving E-mail messages with Spectrum accounts?

    Followup To: alt.windows7.general

    Why take out the Thunderbird 'group? There might be TB-specific matters
    to resolve - for example, have you got identical settings (apart from
    the server names and login/password, obviously!) for your Sunset and
    Spectrum email accounts?

    -- David E. Ross <http://www.rossde.com> NO, not everyone has a smart
    phone. My wife and I have "dumb cell phones" and a land-line. Neither of

    I too have no smartphone, and use my landline. It's getting more and
    more difficult to not have one, though; here (UK) at least two of the supermarket chains won't give you a loyalty card (in one of them,
    irritatingly, their self-service checkouts actually says "don't forget
    to scan your card", even though they won't give one), and more and more
    things need one (I think even some car parks do).

    us can handle QR codes, reply to text messages, or have any kind of phone-based Internet connections. We can send and receive photos only
    through our desktop PCs.

    :-)
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    one can't go from `supposed crackpot ideas have been right before' to
    `we should take this latest crackpot idea onboard without making it
    fight for acceptance like all the previous ones'.
    - Richard Caley, 2002 February 11 00:02:28
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From J. P. Gilliver@G6JPG@255soft.uk to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Sun Jun 7 08:31:25 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 2026/6/7 8:17:42, Marco Moock wrote:
    Am 07.06.26 um 08:06 schrieb David E. Ross:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1

    That is very old.
    Probably you will have issues with current encryption standards.

    That wouldn't explain why his connections (in _and_ out) _do_ sometimes
    work; if there was an encryption problem, then presumably they would
    _never_ work.

    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.

    Use telnet/ncat with the port and test connectivity.

    telnet mail.twc.com <port>
    There needs to be a message that the connection has been established.

    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    one can't go from `supposed crackpot ideas have been right before' to
    `we should take this latest crackpot idea onboard without making it
    fight for acceptance like all the previous ones'.
    - Richard Caley, 2002 February 11 00:02:28
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Sun Jun 7 11:42:03 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    Am 07.06.26 um 09:31 schrieb J. P. Gilliver:
    On 2026/6/7 8:17:42, Marco Moock wrote:
    Am 07.06.26 um 08:06 schrieb David E. Ross:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1

    That is very old.
    Probably you will have issues with current encryption standards.

    That wouldn't explain why his connections (in _and_ out) _do_ sometimes
    work; if there was an encryption problem, then presumably they would
    _never_ work.

    Depending on how the remote site acts (load balancing distributing the
    traffic to different systems) this might be still an issue.
    --
    Gru|f
    Marco

    Spam bitte an abfalleimer2001@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From David E. Ross@nobody@nowhere.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Sun Jun 7 08:40:48 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/7/2026 12:28 AM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/6/7 7:6:52, David E. Ross wrote:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)
    []
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    []
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in
    an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.

    So it's the same server for incoming (POP) and outgoing (SMTP).

    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are
    received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    _Sounds_ like Spectrum's email server(s?) are overloaded/unreliable.
    Have you asked them - especially as they're your ISP too - about it?
    (Raising a ticket or whatever means they use.)

    Yes, I did raise the issue with Spectrum. Until I retired, I was a
    software test engineer for over 30 years. My professional opinion is
    that Spectrum's E-mail servers are often overloaded. Spectrum rejected
    that opinion.

    What happens if you ping them/it? (Run, cmd, type "ping mail.twc.com".)

    Even with timeout setting increased to 10 sec, I get "No reply from
    target". I suspect Spectrum blocks ping requests.

    [snipped]

    Followup To: alt.windows7.general

    Why take out the Thunderbird 'group? There might be TB-specific matters
    to resolve - for example, have you got identical settings (apart from
    the server names and login/password, obviously!) for your Sunset and
    Spectrum email accounts?

    Yes, the settings for two accounts are the same except for the URIs of
    the servers.

    I set Followup to alt.windows7.general becasue I still think this is a
    Spectrum problem that might affect different E-mail clients.
    --

    David E. Ross
    <http://www.rossde.com>

    NO, not everyone has a smart phone. My wife and I have
    "dumb cell phones" and a land-line. Neither of us can
    handle QR codes, reply to text messages, or have any
    kind of phone-based Internet connections. We can send
    and receive photos only through our desktop PCs.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Alan K.@alan@invalid.com to alt.windows7.general on Sun Jun 7 12:14:05 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/7/26 2:06 AM, David E. Ross wrote:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)

    I have four accounts setup on my Thunderbird (plus local folders):
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    * Blogs & News Feeds
    * Eternal September (newsgroups)
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in
    an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.
    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    I have no such problems with E-mail messages through Main E-mail, RSS messages through Blogs & News Feeds, or newsgroup messages through
    Eternal September. I can also readily browse the Web via SeaMonkey and Firefox. I have a clock synchronization application on my PC that has
    no problem querying atomic clocks world-wide via the Internet. I use
    VLC to listen to music streaming via the Internet. I quickly connect to Sunset.net's Web server via an FTP application (My personal Web site is
    quite large). Etc, etc.

    Is anyone else having problems sending or receiving E-mail messages with Spectrum accounts?

    Followup To: alt.windows7.general

    Do you have any other mail client that can be setup to Spectrum?
    Do they have a web mail access?
    --
    Mint 22.3, Thunderbird 140.11.0esr, Firefox 151.0.1
    Alan K.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From VanguardLH@V@nguard.LH to alt.windows7.general on Sun Jun 7 12:55:34 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    "David E. Ross" <nobody@nowhere.invalid> wrote:

    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)

    I have four accounts setup on my Thunderbird (plus local folders):
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    * Blogs & News Feeds
    * Eternal September (newsgroups)
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in
    an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.
    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    I have no such problems with E-mail messages through Main E-mail, RSS messages through Blogs & News Feeds, or newsgroup messages through
    Eternal September. I can also readily browse the Web via SeaMonkey and Firefox. I have a clock synchronization application on my PC that has
    no problem querying atomic clocks world-wide via the Internet. I use
    VLC to listen to music streaming via the Internet. I quickly connect to Sunset.net's Web server via an FTP application (My personal Web site is
    quite large). Etc, etc.

    Is anyone else having problems sending or receiving E-mail messages with Spectrum accounts?

    Followup To: alt.windows7.general

    If you have an anti-malware program interrogating your e-mails, disable
    it especially because it is superfluous. Interrogation of e-mail
    traffic causes delays which can cause timeouts with the server. The
    delays are variable depending on the volume of traffic getting
    interrogated. Little text-only messages take less time to interrogate
    than huge messages, especially those with binary attachments (e.g.,
    photos, files). Windows Defender does not interrogate e-mail or NNTP
    traffic, but you may have added a 3rd-party anti-virus that does (many
    enable it by default to merely bloat their feature set). Interrogation
    of e-mail is superfluous. The same on-access (realtime) scanner gets
    used, so there is no better detection. E-mails are benign until you
    attempt to extract their content at which time the on-access scanner is employed to check for malware. E-mail interrogation doesn't improve
    pest detection coverage, only attempts to detect earlier since you may
    not immediately extract content.

    If using a VPN, retest with it off.

    Check how long is the delay to the server. Do a trace route from your
    host to theirs. In a command shell, run:

    tracrt mail.twc.com

    The default max hops is 30. When I tried a tracert, I saw hops through
    my ISP's network, but at hop 12 I got "Request timed out" which
    continued until tracert gave up at hop 30. Someone, maybe Spectrum,
    doesn't want anyone tracing through their network.

    Check how many, if any, packets gets dropped by running:

    ping mail.twc.com

    I got the "Request timed out" again, and 100% of packets were lost.

    Could be Spectrum is using geofencing to block access to only users in
    their service area. However, you are using a Spectrum cable modem, so supposedly you are within their service area.

    You could try with all add-ons disabled in Thunderbird. If problems
    remain, try using a fresh profile in Thunderbird. You won't lose your
    old profile folder. A new one gets created without any add-ons, without
    a userchrome.css file, and without any tweaks in config screens, or in about:config. A clean profile lets you test if the problem is with
    Tbird, or with an add-on, or with how you configured or modified it.
    Harder to see through muddied water.

    If you can't get Tbird to connect or retrieve, use their webmail client
    to check what messages are sitting in the Inbox. You're using POP which doesn't have any comprehension of folders as does IMAP, so the only
    "folder" (aka mailbox) you can see using a POP client is what the
    webmail client will show as the Inbox folder. If there are other
    folders shown by the webmail client, those cannot be sync'ed to a POP
    client. Look at the sizes of the e-mails your client has not yet
    retrieved. If there is a really huge message (I don't know Spectrum's
    quota limits on received message size), and if you don't really need it,
    either delete it, or move into a different folder in the webmail client.
    Your POP client will then not have that message to retrieve. In fact,
    you might take all messages sitting in the Inbox folder shown by the
    webmail client to move into an archive or pending folder. Then check
    your POP client doesn't fail. There won't be anything for it to find in
    your mailbox, but the POP session should not fail.

    I have seen when a new message has corrupted my account. It was too
    large, indexing got screwed up, or the message got corrupted so the
    server couldn't read it. The client cannot retrieve the message nor any
    others when the mailbox is corrupted. Back when my e-mail service gave
    me a shell to run commands, I could use the server-side client (pine, I
    think) to delete all messages in the mailbox, or effect a reset which
    got everything back in sync. Nowadays you need to get a real tech, and
    past the 1st-level boobs reading canned responses from a database, by escalating (use that word with the 1st-level tech) the issue to a
    3rd-level tech who has permission to reset your account.

    If you cannot resolve the issue, you might reconsider using an ISP
    e-mail service. If a service is unreliably, so is your communication
    through that service. There are plenty of other e-mail providers, and
    many for free (MS, Google, Inbox, Mail.com, Proton but their bridge app
    to your e-mail client requires a paid service) although they may have
    quotas below your threshold for tolerance. Or, since Spectrum is your secondary account, and perhaps a very little used, consider switching to
    their webmail client to see if that is more reliable. If I had to use a particular e-mail provider, but they were unreliable with a local e-mail
    client but okay with their webmail client, and e-mails to that provider
    were very important, and no resolution to unreliability, I'd be forced
    to use their webmail client.

    If the problem is an excessive load on their servers, you cannot resolve
    that on your end. At best you could use an add-on in Tbird to schedule
    the sends through Spectrum at a different time of day when their load
    would be reduced. Every server has a limited set of resources,
    including how many concurrent connections. Users often abuse e-mail
    providers by using overly short polling intervals (with IMAP IDLE you
    get notified when there is a new message instead of polling). They may
    set a polling interval of just 1 minute (often the minimum) which is far
    too short as they couldn't read a new message in that time to then check
    for another new message. Possibly you could hit an anti-abuse quota of
    polling too often, so set it to 5 minutes, or more since this is not
    your primary account. If I used POP, I'd set 5 minutes for the main
    e-mail account, and 10 minutes for a secondary e-mail account; however,
    I use IMAP, so I let the client use IMAP IDLE to get new messages as
    they arrive, not keep polling for new messages that haven't yet arrived.
    You might prefer POP, but may using IMAP would give more more reliable connectivity. Tbird supports IMAP IDLE. Clients that continually poll
    when there are no new messages are like children bothering their parents
    with "Are we there yet?".
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From David E. Ross@nobody@nowhere.invalid to alt.windows7.general on Sun Jun 7 11:07:04 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/7/2026 9:14 AM, Alan K. wrote:
    On 6/7/26 2:06 AM, David E. Ross wrote:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)

    I have four accounts setup on my Thunderbird (plus local folders):
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    * Blogs & News Feeds
    * Eternal September (newsgroups)
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in
    an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.
    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are
    received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    I have no such problems with E-mail messages through Main E-mail, RSS
    messages through Blogs & News Feeds, or newsgroup messages through
    Eternal September. I can also readily browse the Web via SeaMonkey and
    Firefox. I have a clock synchronization application on my PC that has
    no problem querying atomic clocks world-wide via the Internet. I use
    VLC to listen to music streaming via the Internet. I quickly connect to
    Sunset.net's Web server via an FTP application (My personal Web site is
    quite large). Etc, etc.

    Is anyone else having problems sending or receiving E-mail messages with
    Spectrum accounts?

    Followup To: alt.windows7.general

    Do you have any other mail client that can be setup to Spectrum?

    No.

    Do they have a web mail access?

    Yes, and I have no problem accessing my Spectrum E-mail that way.
    However, I want to download all messages (POP3, not IMAP) and leave none
    on the host's server. Of those I download, some I keep a long time;
    others get deleted as soon as finish reading them. Sending E-mail via
    Webmail takes a little more effort than sending via Thunderbird.
    --

    David E. Ross
    <http://www.rossde.com>

    NO, not everyone has a smart phone. My wife and I have
    "dumb cell phones" and a land-line. Neither of us can
    handle QR codes, reply to text messages, or have any
    kind of phone-based Internet connections. We can send
    and receive photos only through our desktop PCs.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Paul@nospam@needed.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Sun Jun 7 16:09:30 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On Sun, 6/7/2026 11:40 AM, David E. Ross wrote:
    On 6/7/2026 12:28 AM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/6/7 7:6:52, David E. Ross wrote:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)
    []
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    []
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in >>> an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.

    So it's the same server for incoming (POP) and outgoing (SMTP).

    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are
    received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    _Sounds_ like Spectrum's email server(s?) are overloaded/unreliable.
    Have you asked them - especially as they're your ISP too - about it?
    (Raising a ticket or whatever means they use.)

    Yes, I did raise the issue with Spectrum. Until I retired, I was a
    software test engineer for over 30 years. My professional opinion is
    that Spectrum's E-mail servers are often overloaded. Spectrum rejected
    that opinion.

    What happens if you ping them/it? (Run, cmd, type "ping mail.twc.com".)

    Even with timeout setting increased to 10 sec, I get "No reply from
    target". I suspect Spectrum blocks ping requests.

    Aha. Our friend "ping" may be giving us a hint.

    There are two options there. First of all, they do not "block" ping.
    To do that, you turn off ICMP responses on the server. There are
    two options.

    1) Turn off just the ping flavor of the ICMP set. Ping is "ignored".

    2) Turn off all of ICMP (my ISP!), including handling of "don't fragment".
    This causes the Black Hole routing problem.
    There was a claim that a "more modern" OS now has a handler for this,
    and is able to figure out that the connection is hung, rather than just
    trashing it with a timeout.

    As a software test engineer, here is how you can test.

    1) Prepare a small email. "Hello World". A one line message.
    This will "Send" because the message can be carried in one (sub-sized) packet.
    Your total message is less than 1500 bytes (which may include headers).

    2) Prepare a long message, several pages of text. One packet will leave the machine
    successfully, then the packet-fragmentation issue comes up, with no ICMP
    protocol (idiots turned it off), then the connection "freezes" and both
    ends of the connection wait for the other end to respond. A good email
    program eventually times out and reports an error during the "Send" phase.
    The email program generally does not understand what happened.

    So that is how you do your diagnosis. You will notice short messages
    always send, long messages do not send. Give that a try, as part
    of problem identification.

    If you have time, try a more modern OS, and use the short and long message tests again. Maybe this time, both transmit even though it is the same
    SMTP server with the same "totally turned off" ICMP.

    The only way I know about this, is it happened to me. This was before any
    OS had handling for this problem.

    Paul

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Ventoy User@invalid@invalid.invalid to alt.windows7.general, alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Sun Jun 7 21:44:35 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 07/06/2026 08:17, Marco Moock wrote:
    Am 07.06.26 um 08:06 schrieb David E. Ross:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1

    That is very old.
    Probably you will have issues with current encryption standards.

    The easiest way to check this is to boot up the system using a Linux
    Ubuntu Live DVD. All Ross needs is a spare USB flash drive with at least
    8 GB of storage and a small Ventoy file to enable the flash drive to
    boot up with any ISO file. He will also need to download the Ubuntu ISO
    file from the official channel. All the links are here:

    Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
    Ubuntu version 20.04.6: https://www.releases.ubuntu.com/focal/
    I have listed the old version of Ubuntu because it is likely to have a
    more recent version of Thunderbird than 52.x.x.

    Ventoy Tutorial: <https://youtu.be/2SXscyVArMI

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From J. P. Gilliver@G6JPG@255soft.uk to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Mon Jun 8 01:00:43 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 2026/6/7 21:44:35, Ventoy User wrote:
    []
    Ubuntu Live DVD. All Ross needs is a spare USB flash drive with at least
    8 GB of storage and a small Ventoy file to enable the flash drive to
    boot up with any ISO file. He will also need to download the Ubuntu ISO
    file from the official channel. All the links are here:

    Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
    Ubuntu version 20.04.6: https://www.releases.ubuntu.com/focal/
    []
    I notice that that post is by "Ventoy User".

    I've not heard of Ventoy before; there is another utility whose name
    escapes me at the moment (something like Rufus is it?) for making
    bootable USBs, that is often mentioned here. Is Ventoy an alternative to
    that?
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    it is easy to make up a lie, but it can take much more time and effort
    to convincingly refute it. - Patrick Cockburn, i, 2016-9-24
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From J. P. Gilliver@G6JPG@255soft.uk to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Mon Jun 8 01:06:52 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 2026/6/7 16:40:48, David E. Ross wrote:
    On 6/7/2026 12:28 AM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    _Sounds_ like Spectrum's email server(s?) are overloaded/unreliable.
    Have you asked them - especially as they're your ISP too - about it?
    (Raising a ticket or whatever means they use.)

    Yes, I did raise the issue with Spectrum. Until I retired, I was a
    software test engineer for over 30 years. My professional opinion is
    that Spectrum's E-mail servers are often overloaded. Spectrum rejected
    that opinion.

    "They would, wouldn't they".

    What happens if you ping them/it? (Run, cmd, type "ping mail.twc.com".)

    Even with timeout setting increased to 10 sec, I get "No reply from
    target". I suspect Spectrum blocks ping requests.

    Yes, I've come across that. I've just tried (with the default timeout)
    pinging the incoming and outgoing servers at my ISP, and got no response.

    [snipped]

    Followup To: alt.windows7.general

    Why take out the Thunderbird 'group? There might be TB-specific matters
    to resolve - for example, have you got identical settings (apart from
    the server names and login/password, obviously!) for your Sunset and
    Spectrum email accounts?

    Yes, the settings for two accounts are the same except for the URIs of
    the servers.

    I set Followup to alt.windows7.general becasue I still think this is a Spectrum problem that might affect different E-mail clients.

    I left the Windows one in, though it isn't (by the sound of it) any more
    a Windows problem than a Thunderbird one (I've left that one in too).

    Do Spectrum have any sort of user forum, where you could ask to see if
    other users are having the same or similar problems?

    Do try Paul's suggestions of tiny and bigger messages, and anything else
    Paul suggests.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    it is easy to make up a lie, but it can take much more time and effort
    to convincingly refute it. - Patrick Cockburn, i, 2016-9-24
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Ventoy User@invalid@invalid.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Mon Jun 8 01:48:37 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 08/06/2026 01:00, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/6/7 21:44:35, Ventoy User wrote:
    []
    Ubuntu Live DVD. All Ross needs is a spare USB flash drive with at least
    8 GB of storage and a small Ventoy file to enable the flash drive to
    boot up with any ISO file. He will also need to download the Ubuntu ISO
    file from the official channel. All the links are here:

    Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
    Ubuntu version 20.04.6: https://www.releases.ubuntu.com/focal/
    []
    I notice that that post is by "Ventoy User".

    I've not heard of Ventoy before; there is another utility whose name
    escapes me at the moment (something like Rufus is it?) for making
    bootable USBs, that is often mentioned here. Is Ventoy an alternative to that?

    Oh no! Ventoy is an open-source tool for creating bootable USB drives
    for ISO, WIM, IMG and VHD(x) files, as well as EFI files.
    With Ventoy, there's no need to repeatedly format the disk; simply drag
    and drop files onto the USB drive and boot them directly.
    You can copy multiple files to different folders, and Ventoy will
    provide a boot menu from which you can select them.

    You can also browse ISO, WIM, IMG, VHD(x) and EFI files on local disks
    and boot them directly.
    x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI
    are all supported.
    Most types of OS are supported, including Windows, WinPE, Linux, Chrome
    OS, Unix, VMware and Xen.


    With Rufus, you need to format the flash drive and unzip the contents of
    the ISO file. With Ventoy, however, you can simply copy the ISO file
    onto the flash drive, boot up the machine, and launch Ventoy's
    MS-DOS-type operating system, which allows you to select the ISO file
    you want to boot up. You can have multiple ISO files on the flash drive
    (or even on your hard disk) and select whichever one you want to boot
    up. It's the best tool around!


    Rufus gives you the option to customise Windows installation files. This
    means that with the latest version of Rufus, you can remove Microsoft's Copilot, OneDrive, Store, etc. It also allows you to bypass TPM and
    Microsoft account requirements. Ventoy can't do that straight away.

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From David LaRue@huey.dll@tampabay.rr.com to alt.windows7.general on Mon Jun 8 03:11:59 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote in news:11035um$gg6j$1@solani.org:

    Am 07.06.26 um 08:06 schrieb David E. Ross:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1

    That is very old.
    Probably you will have issues with current encryption standards.

    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.

    Use telnet/ncat with the port and test connectivity.

    telnet mail.twc.com <port>
    There needs to be a message that the connection has been established.


    Same issue here. Win 7 Pro, Thunderbird

    About once a week the connection will fail to send. I keep TBird running continuously. Usually after 6-12 hours the send will become reliable again. This problem started perhaps about a month ago.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Paul@nospam@needed.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Sun Jun 7 23:26:22 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On Sun, 6/7/2026 8:00 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/6/7 21:44:35, Ventoy User wrote:
    []
    Ubuntu Live DVD. All Ross needs is a spare USB flash drive with at least
    8 GB of storage and a small Ventoy file to enable the flash drive to
    boot up with any ISO file. He will also need to download the Ubuntu ISO
    file from the official channel. All the links are here:

    Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
    Ubuntu version 20.04.6: https://www.releases.ubuntu.com/focal/
    []
    I notice that that post is by "Ventoy User".

    I've not heard of Ventoy before; there is another utility whose name
    escapes me at the moment (something like Rufus is it?) for making
    bootable USBs, that is often mentioned here. Is Ventoy an alternative to that?


    Ventoy is a mechanism for hosting multiple OS images on
    a USB stick, at the same time. You can then select one
    and boot it.

    Whereas the rufus.ie tool, only places one OS on the stick
    at a time.

    The SuperGrub disc, allows chainloading a fair number of OSes,
    but it seems to only support UEFI boot items when I tested it.
    I could not rouse it to boot Legacy Boot materials. You may be
    able to find a way to package materials so SuperGrub could
    load them. That's if you need a hobby :-)

    The suggestion of using Ubuntu 20.04, standard maintenance
    ended May 2025, but there may have been some option to turn
    something on, to extend that past that date. You would look
    at the message-of-the-day to see instructions for that.

    https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle

    The problem with current versions of Ubuntu, like 26.04,
    is the excessive reliance on SNAPs for packaging things,
    instead of the more efficient .deb method of Debian.
    And Canonical also gets carried away with making modifications
    to machines that support Secure Boot.

    *******

    This shows you the exhortation of 20.04.06 regarding
    being out of standard support.

    PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> bash
    Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS (GNU/Linux 6.6.114.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2 x86_64)

    * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
    * Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
    * Support: https://ubuntu.com/pro

    System information as of Sun Jun 7 23:20:47 EDT 2026

    System load: 0.08 Processes: 84
    Usage of /: 0.5% of 1006.85GB Users logged in: 0
    Memory usage: 0% IPv4 address for eth0: 172.22.236.127
    Swap usage: 0%

    * Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa has reached its end of standard support
    on 31 May 2025.

    For more details see:
    https://ubuntu.com/20-04 <===

    Expanded Security Maintenance for Infrastructure is not enabled. <===

    19 updates can be applied immediately.
    To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable

    204 additional security updates can be applied with ESM Infra.
    Learn more about enabling ESM Infra service for Ubuntu 20.04 at https://ubuntu.com/20-04

    "With Ubuntu Pro, the 20.04 LTS will be fully supported until 2030.
    Ubuntu Pro is free for personal and small-scale commercial use on up to 5 machines."

    This message is shown once a day. To disable it please create the /home/username/.hushlogin file.

    Paul
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Paul@nospam@needed.invalid to alt.windows7.general on Mon Jun 8 00:22:36 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On Sun, 6/7/2026 11:11 PM, David LaRue wrote:
    Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote in news:11035um$gg6j$1@solani.org:

    Am 07.06.26 um 08:06 schrieb David E. Ross:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1

    That is very old.
    Probably you will have issues with current encryption standards.

    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.

    Use telnet/ncat with the port and test connectivity.

    telnet mail.twc.com <port>
    There needs to be a message that the connection has been established.


    Same issue here. Win 7 Pro, Thunderbird

    About once a week the connection will fail to send. I keep TBird running continuously. Usually after 6-12 hours the send will become reliable again.
    This problem started perhaps about a month ago.


    https://github.com/s1t5/mail-archiver/issues/177

    "Since Spectrum doesnrCOt support TLSrC>1.3, the server resets the
    connection instead of gracefully downgrading."

    And generally speaking, Google is full of complaints.
    It's not like this started exclusively a month ago.
    It's been like this for years. I suppose this is normal
    for any too-large provider. Except I use ISP email, and
    it is quite consistent <knocks on wood>.

    When a provider is under attack, they don't generally admit it.
    In this case, a DPI box could deflect a lot of external
    attempts to abuse SMTP. If the cable routers were being
    used as a BOTnet, that might be harder to stop (because
    then you cannot tell an attempt to bust a password, from
    an attempt to send a legit email).

    Paul
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Carlos E.R.@robin_listas@es.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Mon Jun 8 10:29:22 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 2026-06-08 05:26, Paul wrote:
    On Sun, 6/7/2026 8:00 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/6/7 21:44:35, Ventoy User wrote:
    []
    Ubuntu Live DVD. All Ross needs is a spare USB flash drive with at least >>> 8 GB of storage and a small Ventoy file to enable the flash drive to
    boot up with any ISO file. He will also need to download the Ubuntu ISO
    file from the official channel. All the links are here:

    Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
    Ubuntu version 20.04.6: https://www.releases.ubuntu.com/focal/
    []
    I notice that that post is by "Ventoy User".

    I've not heard of Ventoy before; there is another utility whose name
    escapes me at the moment (something like Rufus is it?) for making
    bootable USBs, that is often mentioned here. Is Ventoy an alternative to
    that?


    Ventoy is a mechanism for hosting multiple OS images on
    a USB stick, at the same time. You can then select one
    and boot it.

    Whereas the rufus.ie tool, only places one OS on the stick
    at a time.

    With some linuxes, like with openSUSE, you don't need any special tool
    to create the bootable USB. Can be done with "dd" or "cp" or even "cat".


    <https://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/15.6/live/openSUSE-Leap-15.6-XFCE-Live-x86_64-Build19.146-Media.iso>
    <https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Live_USB_stick> <https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Create_a_Live_USB_stick_using_Windows>
    --
    Cheers, Carlos.
    ESEfc-Efc+, EUEfc-Efc|;
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From David E. Ross@nobody@nowhere.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Mon Jun 8 07:49:39 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/7/2026 1:09 PM, Paul wrote:

    [snipped]

    As a software test engineer, here is how you can test.

    1) Prepare a small email. "Hello World". A one line message.
    This will "Send" because the message can be carried in one (sub-sized) packet.
    Your total message is less than 1500 bytes (which may include headers).

    2) Prepare a long message, several pages of text. One packet will leave the machine
    su
    ccessfully, then the packet-fragmentation issue comes up, with no ICMP
    protocol (idiots turned it off), then the connection "freezes" and both
    ends of the connection wait for the other end to respond. A good email
    program eventually times out and reports an error during the "Send" phase.
    The email program generally does not understand what happened.

    So that is how you do your diagnosis. You will notice short messages
    always send, long messages do not send. Give that a try, as part
    of problem identification.

    [snipped]

    I tried sending a short message from my Spectrum account. The subject
    was "test", and the body was "Spectrum". I suppressed the signature
    block. Sending this failed.

    In the meantime, I sent a test message from my Main E-mail (Sunset.net) account. Almost immediately, I received it in my Spectrum account.
    --

    David E. Ross
    <http://www.rossde.com>

    NO, not everyone has a smart phone. My wife and I have
    "dumb cell phones" and a land-line. Neither of us can
    handle QR codes, reply to text messages, or have any
    kind of phone-based Internet connections. We can send
    and receive photos only through our desktop PCs.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From J. P. Gilliver@G6JPG@255soft.uk to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Mon Jun 8 17:20:48 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 2026/6/8 4:26:22, Paul wrote:
    On Sun, 6/7/2026 8:00 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/6/7 21:44:35, Ventoy User wrote:
    []
    Ubuntu Live DVD. All Ross needs is a spare USB flash drive with at least >>> 8 GB of storage and a small Ventoy file to enable the flash drive to
    boot up with any ISO file. He will also need to download the Ubuntu ISO >>> file from the official channel. All the links are here:

    Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
    Ubuntu version 20.04.6: https://www.releases.ubuntu.com/focal/
    []
    I notice that that post is by "Ventoy User".

    I've not heard of Ventoy before; there is another utility whose name
    escapes me at the moment (something like Rufus is it?) for making
    bootable USBs, that is often mentioned here. Is Ventoy an alternative to
    that?


    Ventoy is a mechanism for hosting multiple OS images on
    a USB stick, at the same time. You can then select one
    and boot it.

    Whereas the rufus.ie tool, only places one OS on the stick
    at a time.

    Thanks for that. I was just a bit wary of something I hadn't heard of
    before, being advocated by someone with its name in their ID - since we
    have had in the past posts "recommending" something, by people who turn
    out to be promoting it/them for less than honest purposes. Looks like
    this one is genuine.
    []
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    That's how he [Dr. Who] seems to me. He's always been someone who gets
    the /Guardian/. There are some parts of the universe where it's harder
    to get hold of.
    - Peter Capaldi (current incumbent Doctor), RT 2016/11/26-12/2
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Paul@nospam@needed.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Mon Jun 8 15:17:35 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On Mon, 6/8/2026 12:20 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/6/8 4:26:22, Paul wrote:
    On Sun, 6/7/2026 8:00 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/6/7 21:44:35, Ventoy User wrote:
    []
    Ubuntu Live DVD. All Ross needs is a spare USB flash drive with at least >>>> 8 GB of storage and a small Ventoy file to enable the flash drive to
    boot up with any ISO file. He will also need to download the Ubuntu ISO >>>> file from the official channel. All the links are here:

    Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
    Ubuntu version 20.04.6: https://www.releases.ubuntu.com/focal/
    []
    I notice that that post is by "Ventoy User".

    I've not heard of Ventoy before; there is another utility whose name
    escapes me at the moment (something like Rufus is it?) for making
    bootable USBs, that is often mentioned here. Is Ventoy an alternative to >>> that?


    Ventoy is a mechanism for hosting multiple OS images on
    a USB stick, at the same time. You can then select one
    and boot it.

    Whereas the rufus.ie tool, only places one OS on the stick
    at a time.

    Thanks for that. I was just a bit wary of something I hadn't heard of
    before, being advocated by someone with its name in their ID - since we
    have had in the past posts "recommending" something, by people who turn
    out to be promoting it/them for less than honest purposes. Looks like
    this one is genuine.
    []


    Mike Easter is the Ventoy expert. He has extensive experience
    carting OSes around. There are a few others using it, but not
    that visibly.

    Paul
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Paul@nospam@needed.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Mon Jun 8 15:24:06 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On Mon, 6/8/2026 10:49 AM, David E. Ross wrote:


    I tried sending a short message from my Spectrum account. The subject
    was "test", and the body was "Spectrum". I suppressed the signature
    block. Sending this failed.

    In the meantime, I sent a test message from my Main E-mail (Sunset.net) account. Almost immediately, I received it in my Spectrum account.


    OK, on to the next theory :-/

    I saw several threads indicating that Spectrum Support has the
    mail user test via "WebMail" and if webmail works, they wash their
    hands of any other protocols (like using that SMTP server with the
    strange characteristic).

    Whether someone has a botnet testing passwords against the
    SMTP server, who knows.

    They would not be worthy of the term "IT people", if they
    could not prepare a solution scaled for the size of the user population.
    It's hard to believe it would be a simple load problem. The processing
    of email is rather slow, or at least the behavior of the setup at
    work indicated it needs horsepower. We had a hundred servers
    to spread the load at work. Any time there was a major failure,
    it took that set of equipment 12 to 24 hours to "clear the queue".

    Paul
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Ventoy User@invalid@invalid.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Mon Jun 8 21:23:08 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 08/06/2026 15:49, David E. Ross wrote:
    I tried sending a short message from my Spectrum account. The subject
    was "test", and the body was "Spectrum". I suppressed the signature
    block. Sending this failed.

    In the meantime, I sent a test message from my Main E-mail (Sunset.net) account. Almost immediately, I received it in my Spectrum account.


    This suggests that there is something wrong with the settings of your
    Spectrum Account. Of course, I am assuming that the Sunset account is
    also setup in Thunderbird but it is working as expected while Spectrum
    account isn't.

    Spectrum must have implemented OAuth 2.0 without informing customers
    about it.



    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From David E. Ross@nobody@nowhere.invalid to alt.windows7.general on Mon Jun 8 22:44:11 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/6/2026 11:06 PM, David E. Ross wrote:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)

    I have four accounts setup on my Thunderbird (plus local folders):
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    * Blogs & News Feeds
    * Eternal September (newsgroups)
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in
    an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.
    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    [my own ranting snipped]

    Getting no satisfaction from an online chat with two of Spectrum's
    technicians, I tried a different approach. First, I tested sending
    E-mail from my wife's Spectrum account; and it was successful! So I
    copied here account settings into mine. All tests of POP3 and STMP on
    my own Spectrum account were successful. Unfortunately, that requires
    unsecure POP3 connections.

    I am thinking of contacting all those who communicate with me via my
    Spectrum E-mail address to switch to my Sunset.net address.
    --

    David E. Ross
    <http://www.rossde.com>

    NO, not everyone has a smart phone. My wife and I have
    "dumb cell phones" and a land-line. Neither of us can
    handle QR codes, reply to text messages, or have any
    kind of phone-based Internet connections. We can send
    and receive photos only through our desktop PCs.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From VanguardLH@V@nguard.LH to alt.windows7.general on Tue Jun 9 01:19:58 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    "David E. Ross" <nobody@nowhere.invalid> wrote:

    On 6/6/2026 11:06 PM, David E. Ross wrote:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)

    I have four accounts setup on my Thunderbird (plus local folders):
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    * Blogs & News Feeds
    * Eternal September (newsgroups)
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in
    an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.
    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are
    received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    [my own ranting snipped]

    Getting no satisfaction from an online chat with two of Spectrum's technicians, I tried a different approach. First, I tested sending
    E-mail from my wife's Spectrum account; and it was successful! So I
    copied here account settings into mine. All tests of POP3 and STMP on
    my own Spectrum account were successful. Unfortunately, that requires unsecure POP3 connections.

    I am thinking of contacting all those who communicate with me via my
    Spectrum E-mail address to switch to my Sunset.net address.

    Paul touched on Spectrum's lack of TLS 1.3 support. While you can
    enable the "SSL" support in Tbird (SSL 3.0, and often TLS 1.0, are not supported in the client, but TLS 1.2 and 1.3 should be). I don't recall
    you can set Tbird to use TLS 1.2 instead of trying TLS 1.3. Under
    Tbird's server settings, you can select Connection Security as SSL/TLS,
    but that doesn't give a choice of which TLS version to use. If TLS 1.3
    fails, the client should fallback to TLS 1.2. The client will send a
    STARTTLS command to the server. The client sends EHLO (instead of HELO)
    to inform the server that the client wants to use SMTP advanced which
    includes encryption. Alas, the "250-STARTTLS" status returned by the
    server does not specify which verison of TLS the server supports.

    On a failed encrypted connection attempt using TLS 1.3, the client
    should drop to TLS 1.2. So, maybe there's a fault in Thunderbird in not falling back to an earlier TLS version. In Tbird since v78, TLS prior
    to 1.2 is disabled.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security#Description

    TLS 1.2 emerged in 2008. TLS 1.3 emerged in 2018. Most servers should
    have switched to TLS 1.3 in the 6 years since. TLS 1.3 required more
    secure ciphers meaning some may have been sunsetted. If a server still
    wanted to use the old deprecated ciphers, it could stick with TLS 1.2,
    but the clients may not recognize TLS 1.2 is required when all the
    server returns in "250-STARTTLS". Maybe the certificate indicates
    encryption mode, but I don't dig that deep.

    https://www.a10networks.com/glossary/key-differences-between-tls-1-2-and-tls-1-3/

    TLS 1.3 is faster, and more secure, but that doesn't mean a site updates
    their software to support it, or they configured it wrong.

    https://www.catchpoint.com/http2-vs-http3/tls1-2-vs-1-3
    "The legacy and weak encryption algorithms from TLS 1.2 have been
    removed. TLS 1.3 now only supports Authenticated Encryption with
    Associated Data (AEAD) algorithms."

    Since the server only responds that it supports TLS, there is some
    negotiation on TLS version, but I don't know how that works (and don't
    really care). Paul might know.

    While you can reach out to your contacts to start using your Sunset
    e-mail address, you could in the meantime enable forwarding in your
    Spectrum e-mail account. Send all new e-mails received at Spectrum to
    your Sunset e-mail address. Of course, I'm presuming Spectrum offers a forwarding option. If there is no expiration on using forwarding, you
    could indefinitely leave forwarding enabled at Spectrum.

    Do not use an auto-responder at Spectrum to notify senders of your
    alternate and primary Sunset e-mail address. You could end up notifying spammers and phishers, too.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Paul@nospam@needed.invalid to alt.windows7.general on Tue Jun 9 02:31:39 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On Tue, 6/9/2026 1:44 AM, David E. Ross wrote:
    On 6/6/2026 11:06 PM, David E. Ross wrote:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)

    I have four accounts setup on my Thunderbird (plus local folders):
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    * Blogs & News Feeds
    * Eternal September (newsgroups)
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in
    an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.
    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are
    received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    [my own ranting snipped]

    Getting no satisfaction from an online chat with two of Spectrum's technicians, I tried a different approach. First, I tested sending
    E-mail from my wife's Spectrum account; and it was successful! So I
    copied here account settings into mine. All tests of POP3 and STMP on
    my own Spectrum account were successful. Unfortunately, that requires unsecure POP3 connections.

    I am thinking of contacting all those who communicate with me via my
    Spectrum E-mail address to switch to my Sunset.net address.

    Shocking. A provider accepts connections with no TLS in the year 2026 ?

    I have an email server in a VM I use for test, and one of the things
    it will not do, is accept ANY email posted on the unencrypted ports.
    So even though there are six possible port definitions, three of them
    just throw errors indicating in no uncertain terms, it no longer
    wants to use non-TLS connections. And this is the kind of dev behavior
    I expect to see in the year 2026. Not because customers would particularly
    like it, but because it is not particularly secure.

    If your wifes unsecure POP3 worked, that tells you that something
    is wrong with the TLS session. It could be a certificate issue
    (which TB would tell you about). It could be the TLS negotiation
    that is failing. And we have one datapoint from a discussion thread,
    where it was indicated that the Spectrum SMTP sends an RST packet
    if it detects an attempt to negotiate TLS 1.3 (in other words, it
    does not downgrade to 1.2 and try to renegotiate). Whereas the user
    setting their Thunderbird to use TLS 1.2, would have worked.
    At least as far as "dodging an RST bullet". When an RST is
    sent at you, it's not going to generate good log entries
    which explain what is going on. Only viewing a Wireshark trace
    and seeing the plaintext RST causing the SMTP connection to drop,
    would give you a tiny bit of information.

    This reminds me of the bank, that insisted people use Internet Explorer
    only. And when IE11 had been released and was in common usage,
    the bank insisted the customers use... IE10. At a megacorp,
    you should always exude a sense of not keeping up with the times.

    Thunderbird has the ability to cough up key information for
    a TLS session, such that when Wireshark uses that info, it can
    convert TLS packets from a trace, back into plaintext for analysis.
    However, the staff at Mozilla, have hopelessly screwed that function
    up, to the point it might as well not exist. This is why
    I was duty-bound, NOT to mention it to you, as it would be
    a hopeless waste of your time to tease you with that.
    I was saddened to read all the associated twaddle, but
    it is the year 2026, and we cannot have functions like that
    which actually work for customers needing to debug something.

    Devs should be proud, every time they make me think about
    writing my own email client :-/ Good work, guys.

    So maybe what you need, is two email clients. An email client
    that makes the screwy Spectrum happy. An email client
    that works with all the others. Then, if you need to
    "experiment with Spectrum", there is no need to compromise
    the working state of anything else.

    Paul


    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Daniel70@daniel47@nomail.afraid.org to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Tue Jun 9 19:03:40 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 9/06/2026 5:24 am, Paul wrote:
    On Mon, 6/8/2026 10:49 AM, David E. Ross wrote:

    I tried sending a short message from my Spectrum account. The
    subject was "test", and the body was "Spectrum". I suppressed the
    signature block. Sending this failed.

    In the meantime, I sent a test message from my Main E-mail
    (Sunset.net) account. Almost immediately, I received it in my
    Spectrum account.

    OK, on to the next theory :-/

    I saw several threads indicating that Spectrum Support has the mail
    user test via "WebMail" and if webmail works, they wash their hands
    of any other protocols (like using that SMTP server with the strange characteristic).

    Whether someone has a botnet testing passwords against the SMTP
    server, who knows.

    They would not be worthy of the term "IT people", if they could not
    prepare a solution scaled for the size of the user population. It's
    hard to believe it would be a simple load problem.

    Seems to me, the system has worked .... until just recently.

    Has the number of subscribers to Spectrum increased soooo drastically
    soooo recently to have caused the problem??

    The processing of email is rather slow, or at least the behavior of
    the setup at work indicated it needs horsepower. We had a hundred
    servers to spread the load at work. Any time there was a major
    failure, it took that set of equipment 12 to 24 hours to "clear the
    queue".

    Paul --
    Daniel70
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Paul@nospam@needed.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Tue Jun 9 06:09:16 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On Tue, 6/9/2026 5:03 AM, Daniel70 wrote:

    Seems to me, the system has worked .... until just recently.

    Has the number of subscribers to Spectrum increased soooo drastically
    soooo recently to have caused the problem??

    Internet facing equipment is routinely exposed to DDOS attacks.
    The news server I am posting to, has had a DDOS attack on a weekend,
    which would be carried out by a botnet. You can buy time on botnets
    like that, for about $200.

    Larger companies also face this. Like Canonical got tested recently,
    causing some outages. The suspicion at the time, was that perhaps
    the DDOS was hiding an attack on Canonical infrastructure (a break-in).
    At one point, all the mirrors were disabled. the mirror I would normally
    use, had a variety of different status for the day(s) this lasted.

    We cannot discount an artificial load of unrelated traffic is
    on the Spectrum equipment. This is not like say 25 years ago,
    where you would not have to worry particularly, about an "attack"
    being the root cause. But today, even AI Bots can attack Internet nodes,
    and often for no rational reason.

    There is nothing "normal" about the Internet any more. Only
    the operators can tell you the story, and policy is not to do so.

    Paul


    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From J. P. Gilliver@G6JPG@255soft.uk to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Tue Jun 9 12:34:46 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 2026/6/9 11:9:16, Paul wrote:
    On Tue, 6/9/2026 5:03 AM, Daniel70 wrote:

    Seems to me, the system has worked .... until just recently.

    Has the number of subscribers to Spectrum increased soooo drastically
    soooo recently to have caused the problem??

    Or, it could be that it's just gone above some threshold; I could
    imagine a situation where it works fine (albeit sluggishly) up to some
    point, then falls over (or _really_ struggles) at just one to five more
    users.

    Internet facing equipment is routinely exposed to DDOS attacks.
    The news server I am posting to, has had a DDOS attack on a weekend,
    which would be carried out by a botnet. You can buy time on botnets
    like that, for about $200.

    Larger companies also face this. Like Canonical got tested recently,
    causing some outages. The suspicion at the time, was that perhaps

    Cloudflare fell over a few weeks ago, taking down too much of the
    internet. I don't know if that was an attack or something else; as you
    say, they'll never tell us.

    the DDOS was hiding an attack on Canonical infrastructure (a break-in).
    At one point, all the mirrors were disabled. the mirror I would normally
    use, had a variety of different status for the day(s) this lasted.
    []
    There is nothing "normal" about the Internet any more. Only
    the operators can tell you the story, and policy is not to do so.

    Paul


    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    A man is not contemptible because he thinks science explains
    everything, and a man is not contemptible because he doesn't.
    - Howard Jacobson, in Radio Times
    2010/1/23-29.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From J. P. Gilliver@G6JPG@255soft.uk to alt.windows7.general on Tue Jun 9 13:05:37 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 2026/6/9 7:31:39, Paul wrote:
    []
    Shocking. A provider accepts connections with no TLS in the year 2026 ?

    Not sure if it was 2025 or 2026, but I think PlusNet used to; they
    outsourced email to Greenly recently, claiming users would see no
    difference, but I think some found Greenly was implementing something of
    that nature that Plusnet hadn't been (but were obviously incompetent
    enough not to realise it, thinking presumably that "everybody" was using
    it anyway). Their system I think did implement it if the user's client
    did, so all those users who already had it turned on did indeed see no difference.
    []
    (which TB would tell you about). It could be the TLS negotiation

    Though experience has told me that TB's error messages are sometimes not
    that clear (and occasionally actually wrong).
    []
    Devs should be proud, every time they make me think about
    writing my own email client :-/ Good work, guys.

    I remember a Fortune from around 1980 - something to the effect that
    every program expands until it can do email.

    So maybe what you need, is two email clients. An email client
    that makes the screwy Spectrum happy. An email client
    that works with all the others. Then, if you need to
    "experiment with Spectrum", there is no need to compromise
    the working state of anything else.

    Good thought!

    Or possibly some sort of MITM like stunnel.

    Paul


    John
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Quantum particles: the dreams that stuff is made of - David Moser
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From sticks@wolverine01@charter.net to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Tue Jun 9 08:27:18 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    I'm leaving the win7 group intact, but this has nothing to do with
    windows 7.

    On 6/8/2026 2:24 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Mon, 6/8/2026 10:49 AM, David E. Ross wrote:


    I tried sending a short message from my Spectrum account. The subject
    was "test", and the body was "Spectrum". I suppressed the signature
    block. Sending this failed.

    In the meantime, I sent a test message from my Main E-mail (Sunset.net)
    account. Almost immediately, I received it in my Spectrum account.


    OK, on to the next theory :-/

    I saw several threads indicating that Spectrum Support has the
    mail user test via "WebMail" and if webmail works, they wash their
    hands of any other protocols (like using that SMTP server with the
    strange characteristic).

    Whether someone has a botnet testing passwords against the
    SMTP server, who knows.

    They would not be worthy of the term "IT people", if they
    could not prepare a solution scaled for the size of the user population.
    It's hard to believe it would be a simple load problem. The processing
    of email is rather slow, or at least the behavior of the setup at
    work indicated it needs horsepower. We had a hundred servers
    to spread the load at work. Any time there was a major failure,
    it took that set of equipment 12 to 24 hours to "clear the queue".

    We have the Spectrum problem in our house today. The mobile phones work
    just fine with data off using only the spectrum wifi. But Desktop and
    laptop cannot receive. They will send, but you get the error message
    saying a "copy was not placed in your sent folder due to network or file access errors." The mail will then appear on the phones, but not in the desktop or laptop.
    --
    Science DoesnrCOt Support Darwin. Scientists Do

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From sticks@wolverine01@charter.net to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Tue Jun 9 09:10:22 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/9/2026 8:27 AM, sticks wrote:

    We have the Spectrum problem in our house today.-a The mobile phones work just fine with data off using only the spectrum wifi.-a But Desktop and laptop cannot receive.-a They will send, but you get the error message saying a "copy was not placed in your sent folder due to network or file access errors."-a The mail will then appear on the phones, but not in the desktop or laptop.

    A little correction. On my wife's account, she says it's the opposite.
    Her phone has no new mail, but they are there on her laptop. Strange
    --
    Science DoesnrCOt Support Darwin. Scientists Do

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From sticks@wolverine01@charter.net to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Tue Jun 9 10:14:55 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/9/2026 9:10 AM, sticks wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 8:27 AM, sticks wrote:

    We have the Spectrum problem in our house today.-a The mobile phones
    work just fine with data off using only the spectrum wifi.-a But
    Desktop and laptop cannot receive.-a They will send, but you get the
    error message saying a "copy was not placed in your sent folder due to
    network or file access errors."-a The mail will then appear on the
    phones, but not in the desktop or laptop.

    A little correction.-a On my wife's account, she says it's the opposite.
    Her phone has no new mail, but they are there on her laptop.-a Strange

    I decided to call Spectrum to see if they were aware of any server
    issues. Naturally they had me go to webmail and see if that was
    working, which it is. So she claimed the problem is a Thunderbird
    problem. When I asked her to then explain why my wife using Thunderbird
    on the laptop is fine, but her Android phone does not work. Or why my
    iphone works, but my desktop does not.

    I don't know what to think, but since the android doesn't work either I
    think the Birds can be eliminated as the problem. They are having some
    kind of server issues they will not admit.
    --
    Science DoesnrCOt Support Darwin. Scientists Do

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From ant@ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) to alt.comp.software.thunderbird,alt.windows7.general on Tue Jun 9 23:59:38 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    You might to read https://community.spectrum.net/discussion/178341/a-message-to-customers-having-trouble-accessing-legacy-rr-com-and-roadrunner-com-email-accounts/p1,
    https://community.spectrum.net/discussion/179135/is-mobile-charter-nets-imap-e-mail-server-having-problems-right-now,
    and https://community.spectrum.net/categories/email-22.


    In alt.comp.software.thunderbird David E. Ross <nobody@nowhere.invalid> wrote:
    Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
    Thunderbird 52.9.1
    Broadband Internet via Spectrum (cable, not WiFi)

    I have four accounts setup on my Thunderbird (plus local folders):
    * Main E-Mail (Sunset.net, a unit of Great Basin Internet(
    * Spectrum (E-mail)
    * Blogs & News Feeds
    * Eternal September (newsgroups)
    The two E-mail accounts are POP3/STMP with no IMAP.

    Except for the Spectrum account, all of them seem okay. Usually,
    attempting to send an E-mail message via the Spectrum account results in
    an error popup that says:
    Sending of the message failed.
    The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing
    server (SMTP) mail.twc.com timed out. Try again.
    Usually, attempting to check for or receiving incoming E-mail messages
    from the Spectrum account results in an error popup that says:
    Connection to server mail.twc.com timed out.
    These are intermittant problems. Sometimes, messages do go out and are received. However, these problems occur more often than not.

    I have no such problems with E-mail messages through Main E-mail, RSS messages through Blogs & News Feeds, or newsgroup messages through
    Eternal September. I can also readily browse the Web via SeaMonkey and Firefox. I have a clock synchronization application on my PC that has
    no problem querying atomic clocks world-wide via the Internet. I use
    VLC to listen to music streaming via the Internet. I quickly connect to Sunset.net's Web server via an FTP application (My personal Web site is
    quite large). Etc, etc.

    Is anyone else having problems sending or receiving E-mail messages with Spectrum accounts?

    Followup To: alt.windows7.general
    --
    "Jesus said, 'Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.' --Matthew 7:13-14. 2 hard. :(
    Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
    /\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
    / /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
    | |o o| |
    \ _ /
    ( )
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From ant@ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Wed Jun 10 00:02:03 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    In alt.comp.software.thunderbird sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 9:10 AM, sticks wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 8:27 AM, sticks wrote:

    We have the Spectrum problem in our house today.a The mobile phones
    work just fine with data off using only the spectrum wifi.a But
    Desktop and laptop cannot receive.a They will send, but you get the
    error message saying a "copy was not placed in your sent folder due to
    network or file access errors."a The mail will then appear on the
    phones, but not in the desktop or laptop.

    A little correction.a On my wife's account, she says it's the opposite. Her phone has no new mail, but they are there on her laptop.a Strange

    I decided to call Spectrum to see if they were aware of any server
    issues. Naturally they had me go to webmail and see if that was
    working, which it is. So she claimed the problem is a Thunderbird
    problem. When I asked her to then explain why my wife using Thunderbird
    on the laptop is fine, but her Android phone does not work. Or why my iphone works, but my desktop does not.

    I don't know what to think, but since the android doesn't work either I think the Birds can be eliminated as the problem. They are having some
    kind of server issues they will not admit.

    Maybe https://community.spectrum.net/discussion/179135/is-mobile-charter-nets-imap-e-mail-server-having-problems-right-now is related to yours.
    --
    "Jesus said, 'Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.' --Matthew 7:13-14. 2 hard. :(
    Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
    /\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
    / /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
    | |o o| |
    \ _ /
    ( )
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From ant@ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Wed Jun 10 00:03:04 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    In alt.comp.software.thunderbird Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
    On Mon, 6/8/2026 12:20 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/6/8 4:26:22, Paul wrote:
    On Sun, 6/7/2026 8:00 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/6/7 21:44:35, Ventoy User wrote:
    []
    Ubuntu Live DVD. All Ross needs is a spare USB flash drive with at least
    8 GB of storage and a small Ventoy file to enable the flash drive to >>>> boot up with any ISO file. He will also need to download the Ubuntu ISO >>>> file from the official channel. All the links are here:

    Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
    Ubuntu version 20.04.6: https://www.releases.ubuntu.com/focal/
    []
    I notice that that post is by "Ventoy User".

    I've not heard of Ventoy before; there is another utility whose name
    escapes me at the moment (something like Rufus is it?) for making
    bootable USBs, that is often mentioned here. Is Ventoy an alternative to >>> that?


    Ventoy is a mechanism for hosting multiple OS images on
    a USB stick, at the same time. You can then select one
    and boot it.

    Whereas the rufus.ie tool, only places one OS on the stick
    at a time.

    Thanks for that. I was just a bit wary of something I hadn't heard of before, being advocated by someone with its name in their ID - since we have had in the past posts "recommending" something, by people who turn
    out to be promoting it/them for less than honest purposes. Looks like
    this one is genuine.
    []


    Mike Easter is the Ventoy expert. He has extensive experience
    carting OSes around. There are a few others using it, but not
    that visibly.

    Ventoy rocks. Others and I use it to carry it with us at all the times like for emergencies.
    --
    "Jesus said, 'Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.' --Matthew 7:13-14. 2 hard. :(
    Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
    /\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
    / /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
    | |o o| |
    \ _ /
    ( )
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From sticks@wolverine01@charter.net to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Tue Jun 9 19:49:06 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/9/2026 7:02 PM, Ant wrote:
    In alt.comp.software.thunderbird sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 9:10 AM, sticks wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 8:27 AM, sticks wrote:

    We have the Spectrum problem in our house today.-a The mobile phones
    work just fine with data off using only the spectrum wifi.-a But
    Desktop and laptop cannot receive.-a They will send, but you get the
    error message saying a "copy was not placed in your sent folder due to >>>> network or file access errors."-a The mail will then appear on the
    phones, but not in the desktop or laptop.

    A little correction.-a On my wife's account, she says it's the opposite. >>> Her phone has no new mail, but they are there on her laptop.-a Strange

    I decided to call Spectrum to see if they were aware of any server
    issues. Naturally they had me go to webmail and see if that was
    working, which it is. So she claimed the problem is a Thunderbird
    problem. When I asked her to then explain why my wife using Thunderbird
    on the laptop is fine, but her Android phone does not work. Or why my
    iphone works, but my desktop does not.

    I don't know what to think, but since the android doesn't work either I
    think the Birds can be eliminated as the problem. They are having some
    kind of server issues they will not admit.

    Maybe https://community.spectrum.net/discussion/179135/is-mobile-charter-nets-imap-e-mail-server-having-problems-right-now is related to yours.

    This is exactly the problem I am having. Been working all day to get it going. The darn community site won't let me register to add my info unfortunately. They tell me I have info already and then refuse to use
    it. Go figure.
    For me, my iphone works just fine as well as a desktop in my office, but
    my main computer out in the garage cannot get mail. My wife is the
    opposite. Her android phone can't do squat, but her laptop works just
    fine. I have logs now at least showing they are refusing connections
    for some reason, but I got to the point my head was spinning and kinda
    quit. I'm hoping they admit they are aware of the problem and get it
    fixed. I bookmarked the site and will check back. Thank you very much!
    --
    Science DoesnrCOt Support Darwin. Scientists Do

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Paul@nospam@needed.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Tue Jun 9 22:56:25 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On Tue, 6/9/2026 8:49 PM, sticks wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 7:02 PM, Ant wrote:
    In alt.comp.software.thunderbird sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 9:10 AM, sticks wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 8:27 AM, sticks wrote:

    We have the Spectrum problem in our house today.-a The mobile phones >>>>> work just fine with data off using only the spectrum wifi.-a But
    Desktop and laptop cannot receive.-a They will send, but you get the >>>>> error message saying a "copy was not placed in your sent folder due to >>>>> network or file access errors."-a The mail will then appear on the
    phones, but not in the desktop or laptop.

    A little correction.-a On my wife's account, she says it's the opposite. >>>> Her phone has no new mail, but they are there on her laptop.-a Strange

    I decided to call Spectrum to see if they were aware of any server
    issues.-a Naturally they had me go to webmail and see if that was
    working, which it is.-a So she claimed the problem is a Thunderbird
    problem.-a When I asked her to then explain why my wife using Thunderbird >>> on the laptop is fine, but her Android phone does not work.-a Or why my
    iphone works, but my desktop does not.

    I don't know what to think, but since the android doesn't work either I
    think the Birds can be eliminated as the problem.-a They are having some >>> kind of server issues they will not admit.

    Maybe https://community.spectrum.net/discussion/179135/is-mobile-charter-nets-imap-e-mail-server-having-problems-right-now is related to yours.

    This is exactly the problem I am having.-a Been working all day to get it going.-a The darn community site won't let me register to add my info unfortunately.-a They tell me I have info already and then refuse to use it.-a Go figure.
    For me, my iphone works just fine as well as a desktop in my office, but my main computer out in the garage cannot get mail.-a My wife is the opposite.-a Her android phone can't do squat, but her laptop works just fine.-a I have logs now at least showing they are refusing connections for some reason, but I got to the point my head was spinning and kinda quit.-a I'm hoping they admit they are aware of the problem and get it fixed.-a I bookmarked the site and will check back.-a Thank you very much!



    OK, you spectrum people. Try this.
    I can't expect this to work here, as I'm outside your ISP.

    https://ssl-tools.net/mailservers/mail.twc.com

    SSLLabs has tools for checking web browsers (the Mozilla products
    have captive sets of certificates that do not come from the OS certificate store).
    SSLLabs also has tools for checking a website for https: details

    But I also located that they have some sort of mailserver check.
    For whatever it is worth.

    At one time the ssllabs test took two or three minutes to run,
    and were quite comprehensive. But they had to dial that back,
    and the schemes don't work quite the same way when testing
    now as they used to. But perhaps we'll get a "hint", anyway.

    Paul

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From sticks@wolverine01@charter.net to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Tue Jun 9 22:53:57 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/9/2026 9:56 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Tue, 6/9/2026 8:49 PM, sticks wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 7:02 PM, Ant wrote:
    In alt.comp.software.thunderbird sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote: >>>> On 6/9/2026 9:10 AM, sticks wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 8:27 AM, sticks wrote:

    We have the Spectrum problem in our house today.-a The mobile phones >>>>>> work just fine with data off using only the spectrum wifi.-a But
    Desktop and laptop cannot receive.-a They will send, but you get the >>>>>> error message saying a "copy was not placed in your sent folder due to >>>>>> network or file access errors."-a The mail will then appear on the >>>>>> phones, but not in the desktop or laptop.

    A little correction.-a On my wife's account, she says it's the opposite. >>>>> Her phone has no new mail, but they are there on her laptop.-a Strange >>>
    I decided to call Spectrum to see if they were aware of any server
    issues.-a Naturally they had me go to webmail and see if that was
    working, which it is.-a So she claimed the problem is a Thunderbird
    problem.-a When I asked her to then explain why my wife using Thunderbird >>>> on the laptop is fine, but her Android phone does not work.-a Or why my >>>> iphone works, but my desktop does not.

    I don't know what to think, but since the android doesn't work either I >>>> think the Birds can be eliminated as the problem.-a They are having some >>>> kind of server issues they will not admit.

    Maybe https://community.spectrum.net/discussion/179135/is-mobile-charter-nets-imap-e-mail-server-having-problems-right-now is related to yours.

    This is exactly the problem I am having.-a Been working all day to get it going.-a The darn community site won't let me register to add my info unfortunately.-a They tell me I have info already and then refuse to use it.-a Go figure.
    For me, my iphone works just fine as well as a desktop in my office, but my main computer out in the garage cannot get mail.-a My wife is the opposite.-a Her android phone can't do squat, but her laptop works just fine.-a I have logs now at least showing they are refusing connections for some reason, but I got to the point my head was spinning and kinda quit.-a I'm hoping they admit they are aware of the problem and get it fixed.-a I bookmarked the site and will check back.-a Thank you very much!



    OK, you spectrum people. Try this.
    I can't expect this to work here, as I'm outside your ISP.

    https://ssl-tools.net/mailservers/mail.twc.com

    Here's what it said:

    "No connection to the mailservers of mobile.charter.net could be
    established."



    SSLLabs has tools for checking web browsers (the Mozilla products
    have captive sets of certificates that do not come from the OS certificate store).
    SSLLabs also has tools for checking a website for https: details

    But I also located that they have some sort of mailserver check.
    For whatever it is worth.

    At one time the ssllabs test took two or three minutes to run,
    and were quite comprehensive. But they had to dial that back,
    and the schemes don't work quite the same way when testing
    now as they used to. But perhaps we'll get a "hint", anyway.

    Paul

    --
    Science DoesnrCOt Support Darwin. Scientists Do

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From ant@ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Wed Jun 10 04:49:27 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    In alt.comp.software.thunderbird sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 7:02 PM, Ant wrote:
    In alt.comp.software.thunderbird sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 9:10 AM, sticks wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 8:27 AM, sticks wrote:

    We have the Spectrum problem in our house today.a The mobile phones
    work just fine with data off using only the spectrum wifi.a But
    Desktop and laptop cannot receive.a They will send, but you get the
    error message saying a "copy was not placed in your sent folder due to >>>> network or file access errors."a The mail will then appear on the
    phones, but not in the desktop or laptop.

    A little correction.a On my wife's account, she says it's the opposite. >>> Her phone has no new mail, but they are there on her laptop.a Strange

    I decided to call Spectrum to see if they were aware of any server
    issues. Naturally they had me go to webmail and see if that was
    working, which it is. So she claimed the problem is a Thunderbird
    problem. When I asked her to then explain why my wife using Thunderbird >> on the laptop is fine, but her Android phone does not work. Or why my
    iphone works, but my desktop does not.

    I don't know what to think, but since the android doesn't work either I
    think the Birds can be eliminated as the problem. They are having some
    kind of server issues they will not admit.

    Maybe https://community.spectrum.net/discussion/179135/is-mobile-charter-nets-imap-e-mail-server-having-problems-right-now is related to yours.

    This is exactly the problem I am having. Been working all day to get it going. The darn community site won't let me register to add my info unfortunately. They tell me I have info already and then refuse to use
    it. Go figure.
    For me, my iphone works just fine as well as a desktop in my office, but
    my main computer out in the garage cannot get mail. My wife is the opposite. Her android phone can't do squat, but her laptop works just
    fine. I have logs now at least showing they are refusing connections
    for some reason, but I got to the point my head was spinning and kinda
    quit. I'm hoping they admit they are aware of the problem and get it
    fixed. I bookmarked the site and will check back. Thank you very much!

    It got more people posting in it. I ran into this problem last night. A
    mod finally esclated this issue to its engineers. They broke something
    on their end so they have to fix it. We'll have to wait! :(
    --
    "Jesus said, 'Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.' --Matthew 7:13-14. 2 hard. :(
    Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
    /\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
    / /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
    | |o o| |
    \ _ /
    ( )
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From ant@ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Wed Jun 10 04:57:18 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    In alt.comp.software.thunderbird Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
    On Tue, 6/9/2026 8:49 PM, sticks wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 7:02 PM, Ant wrote:
    In alt.comp.software.thunderbird sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote: >>> On 6/9/2026 9:10 AM, sticks wrote:
    On 6/9/2026 8:27 AM, sticks wrote:

    We have the Spectrum problem in our house today.a The mobile phones >>>>> work just fine with data off using only the spectrum wifi.a But
    Desktop and laptop cannot receive.a They will send, but you get the >>>>> error message saying a "copy was not placed in your sent folder due to >>>>> network or file access errors."a The mail will then appear on the
    phones, but not in the desktop or laptop.

    A little correction.a On my wife's account, she says it's the opposite. >>>> Her phone has no new mail, but they are there on her laptop.a Strange

    I decided to call Spectrum to see if they were aware of any server
    issues.a Naturally they had me go to webmail and see if that was
    working, which it is.a So she claimed the problem is a Thunderbird
    problem.a When I asked her to then explain why my wife using Thunderbird >>> on the laptop is fine, but her Android phone does not work.a Or why my >>> iphone works, but my desktop does not.

    I don't know what to think, but since the android doesn't work either I >>> think the Birds can be eliminated as the problem.a They are having some >>> kind of server issues they will not admit.

    Maybe https://community.spectrum.net/discussion/179135/is-mobile-charter-nets-imap-e-mail-server-having-problems-right-now is related to yours.

    This is exactly the problem I am having.a Been working all day to get it going.a The darn community site won't let me register to add my info unfortunately.a They tell me I have info already and then refuse to use it.a Go figure.
    For me, my iphone works just fine as well as a desktop in my office, but my main computer out in the garage cannot get mail.a My wife is the opposite.a Her android phone can't do squat, but her laptop works just fine.a I have logs now at least showing they are refusing connections for some reason, but I got to the point my head was spinning and kinda quit.a I'm hoping they admit they are aware of the problem and get it fixed.a I bookmarked the site and will check back.a Thank you very much!



    OK, you spectrum people. Try this.
    I can't expect this to work here, as I'm outside your ISP.

    https://ssl-tools.net/mailservers/mail.twc.com

    SSLLabs has tools for checking web browsers (the Mozilla products
    have captive sets of certificates that do not come from the OS certificate store).
    SSLLabs also has tools for checking a website for https: details

    But I also located that they have some sort of mailserver check.
    For whatever it is worth.

    At one time the ssllabs test took two or three minutes to run,
    and were quite comprehensive. But they had to dial that back,
    and the schemes don't work quite the same way when testing
    now as they used to. But perhaps we'll get a "hint", anyway.

    Let's have Spectrum fix this mess. It is broken for many of its Internet subscribers as you can see in my forum thread.
    --
    "Jesus said, 'Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.' --Matthew 7:13-14. 2 hard. :(
    Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
    /\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
    / /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
    | |o o| |
    \ _ /
    ( )
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Paul@nospam@needed.invalid to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Wed Jun 10 01:35:17 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On Wed, 6/10/2026 12:49 AM, Ant wrote:


    It got more people posting in it. I ran into this problem last night. A
    mod finally esclated this issue to its engineers. They broke something
    on their end so they have to fix it. We'll have to wait! :(


    The reason I want you to debug, is so *you* know what kind of
    mistake they made this time. Then, the *next* time they make
    the same mistake, you have the tech info to point out to them
    regarding their *last* mistake. I like such ammunition,
    to rub the noses of the Tech Support people in, when it comes
    to claims of "our shit doesn't stink". Well, "it stunk the last time".

    Like, if someone does not review certificates on *all* Spectrum servers.

    There is supposed to be a person, they're an "IT person" where
    their job is to make sure this does not happen in advance of it
    not happening.

    Paul

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Andy Burns@usenet@andyburns.uk to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Wed Jun 10 14:55:04 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    sticks wrote:

    Paul wrote:

    -a-a-a https://ssl-tools.net/mailservers/mail.twc.com

    Here's what it said:

    "No connection to the mail servers of mobile.charter.net could be established."
    They're probably busy congratulating themselves for implementing a new
    AI based system that blocks scammers from their email servers, but
    haven't yet realised it's keeping some fraction of their users out too ...
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From sticks@wolverine01@charter.net to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Wed Jun 10 09:11:19 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/10/2026 8:55 AM, Andy Burns wrote:
    sticks wrote:

    Paul wrote:

    -a-a-a https://ssl-tools.net/mailservers/mail.twc.com

    Here's what it said:

    "No connection to the mail servers of mobile.charter.net could be
    established."
    They're probably busy congratulating themselves for implementing a new
    AI based system that blocks scammers from their email servers, but
    haven't yet realised it's keeping some fraction of their users out too ...

    From the log:
    ---
    XHRPOST https://wolverine01@charter.net:(PassHidden)@autodiscover.charter.net/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml
    NS_ERROR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

    XHRPOST
    http://autodiscover.charter.net/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml NS_ERROR_CONNECTION_REFUSED
    ---

    Yep. Nothing can be done until they fix this issue I guess. The Birds
    auto config does come up with the right stuff, but I tried it manually
    several times and made no difference. Once you're blocked, you're
    screwed.
    --
    Science DoesnrCOt Support Darwin. Scientists Do

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From sticks@wolverine01@charter.net to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.software.thunderbird on Wed Jun 10 14:15:48 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

    On 6/10/2026 9:11 AM, sticks wrote:

    Yep.-a Nothing can be done until they fix this issue I guess.-a The Birds auto config does come up with the right stuff, but I tried it manually several times and made no difference.-a Once you're blocked, you're screwed.

    Well, it looks like they finally fixed it. Everything works as it
    should again.
    --
    Science DoesnrCOt Support Darwin. Scientists Do

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2