Care4free email access intermittent via Thunderbird and Mailwasher

[#1]

For some time my access to my Care4free emails through my email applications Thunderbird and MailWasher has been intermittent, sometimes they connect, often they do not.  With Webmail connection is fine.
My settings appear to be correct and have not been changed for some time (over 3 years).
Advice welcome on this issue.

[#2]

Hi Trevor,

A warm welcome to the forums.  Given your description, I would suspect that there are problems with your connection.  Do you notice issues on anything else?  It would be worth working through the basics.

Broadband is not going to work well if the "phone" line is not working properly.

Please perform a quiet line test - dial 17070 select option 2 using a corded phone plugged into the test socket behind the face plate of the master socket. It should be silent. A noisy phone line (or no dial tone) will have a marked adverse impact on the performance of broadband.

If the line is noisy or there is no dial tone, then a PHONE LINE fault needs to be raised with your phone provider. If this is PlusNet, you can report a fault on line using the button below.  From the Q&A list, choose the one which matches the problem, 'open' the 'section' and click the trouble-shooter link.  NB: If you receive a failure message (rather than a log-in prompt) then log-in to the user portal in a different browser tab and attempt to use the trouble-shooter again.

• Phone Faults

[#3]

Hi Townman,
Thank you for your reply.
I connected to the test socket with an analogue receiver and got a clear dialling tone.  I performed the quiet line test, the line was dead quiet.
It might be worth trying resetting my broadband connection, i.e. switch the router off for half an hour, as the connection is sometimes lost due to a brief power cut lasting only a few seconds?
Regards,
Trevor

[#4]

Probably not a connectivity issue then - try changing the mail server time outs to two minutes.

[#5]

Tried this wiith MailWasher with the same result, first attempt to connect did not work, when I prompted MailWasher to try again it connected immediately.  Thunderbird timeout is already 100 sec so I expect an extra 20 sec will mae little difference.
With both mail clients it appears to connect immediately or not at all.

[#6]

Hey there, thanks a lot for getting in touch and I'm sorry to hear that you're having issues here. Are you able to log into your account via webmail at all?

[#7]

Hi Adam,
Thank you for your reply.
I have had no problem with Webmail.
The issue is with intermittent connection with my email applications, MailWasher and Thunderbird, sometimes they connect, often they do not.  I do not encounter this problem with any other of my email addresses.

[#8 · Accepted solution]

Without any further action on my part I have not had this problem for over a month.  Presumably the cause has been fixed.  Thanks to whoever made the repair