Outlook Express 6

Norton Antivirus Causes Outlook to Stop Responding

This is taken from the Microsoft Knowledge Base, and is a known issue with Norton AnitVirus.

Symptoms
When you use Outlook Express to check mail, Outlook Express may return a time-out error message. You can successfully telnet to the server, but you cannot use Outlook Express to connect to the server.

Cause
Norton System Works includes an antivirus e-mail scan. This issue can occur if this Norton System Works antivirus e-mail scan is enabled; Outlook Express 6 times out when connecting to the mail server to send or receive email. This issue affects only Outlook Express 6.

Workaround
To work around this issue, disable the e-mail scan portion of Norton System Works.

IMPORTANT Norton now acknowledges that autoprotection of email is not necessary. As taken from their support site:

"..If you disable email protection, is your computer still safe from email viruses?
Disabling email protection does not leave you vulnerable to viruses and malicious software in email. It is a separate layer of protection in addition to Auto-Protect. Auto-Protect scans any incoming files, including email, as they are saved to your hard drive. As long as you keep your virus definitions up to date with LiveUpdate, and keep Auto-Protect enabled and set to scan files as they are created or downloaded, your system is fully protected."