Virgin Mail Upgrade breaks Outlook

anguilla

My Dad migrated to Win10 this week & has Outlook 2013 as his mail client. All worked properly Friday so we know its not the new OS and then when he went to send an email yesterday it wouldn't send - network error.

Called VM today and went through all the troubleshooting and was informed that:
a) yes, he has just been upgraded
b) with the upgrade users on Windows 8 or 10 using Outlook would have the issue and he should use Windows Live Essentials instead.
c) live with it and there will be a fix coming out soon

Absolutely ridiculous - they know there is an issue but rather than fix the issue and then migrate, they are knowingly rolling out something that will break a fair proportion of users. :mad:

G_M

I wouldn't dream of upgrading to windows 10 for at least 6 months (better still 11).

Then there's a chance most of the inevitable bugs will be if not fixed, at least known about.

Nilrem

Outlook vs Live should not and will not make a difference, the email server doesn't care about the client as emails are sent in standard format that is client agnostic (one of the reasons that spam is so hard to deal with is that the client doesn't have to issue any id, other than "authentication" for the account if the provider has set it to check the user is a customer).

What has probably changed is something like where they've change the email servers and either the DNS hasn't updated for the new servers, or the clients need a setting changed for the SMTP settings in the email client's accounts options.

It sounds like the VM callcenter worker isn't trained to support outlook (it's not common with home users as Windows Vista on doesn't supply outlook express but uses Windows Live essentials/Live mail), and talking rubbish.

First things I'd check are that the settings in his email account settings match those that are on the VM email support page - you're interested in the SMTP server, port and does it need authentication (from memory), once you've got those it doesn't matter if you're using the latest email client provided with Windows 7/8/10, something from Apple's latest product, or a copy of an email client from a 90's cover disc (I think if you can get online you can still use DOS based email clients on 386's).

The other thing to check is if he's installed any new AV software that can mess up emails quite often as the AV software typically tries to sit in the middle between your email client and the email server at your ISP so it can check the contents for virii (and more than once I've seen AV change one of the settings in the client to something that didn't work with an ISP because the ISP didn't use a default port or similar).

It could also have just fixed itself overnight if it's due to VM moving the account to the new email provision system.

tizerbelle

anguilla wrote: »

My Dad migrated to Win10 this week & has Outlook 2013 as his mail client. All worked properly Friday so we know its not the new OS and then when he went to send an email yesterday it wouldn't send - network error.

Did your Dad send any emails after the WIN10 upgrade but before the VM changes? Only reason I ask is a number of people have reported not being able to send emails from Outlook 2013 after the WIN10 upgrade. See here for problem and fix.

anguilla

Thanks Tizerbelle,

Yes he did send post upgrade. However the sfc /scannow fix works.

Shame Virgin Technical Support is totally unaware of it