PC mystery

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I popped over the Paul and Sue’s today to help them sort out a few niggles on their PCs.

I guess it was a day of success and failure! New anti-virus installed – check; Uninstallation of un-needed programs – check; installation of Office 2003 – check; a general tidy-up – check.

What proved to be an absolute nightmare, was their ongoing ’email problem’. Ordinary emails could be sent OK from Paul’s, but anything with an attachment just ‘timed-out’. Confusingly, Sue’s emails, on the same network worked fine, with or without an attachment). Even after searching the internet (discovering that it’s a ‘popular’ problem), we couldn’t resolve it. Internet wisdom suggests it’s a firewall issue, but even after disabling the AVG Firewall, it still wouldn’t send them. We tried everything – from creating a new account, to trying different email programs, but it was ‘no-go’. Web-based email such as googlemail worked fine though. Spooky!

In the end, I gave up, (and I hate that). We reluctantly concluded that it was time for a new PC for Paul!