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Old 26 Jan 2021, 09:03 PM   #1
6Antique9
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Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 10
Unable to send email

I am with TalkTalk but use eM Client. Not very computer literate so please be patient. I have recently been unable to send or reply to emails in eM Client but if I go in to my TalkTalk mail I can. It appears I have a mail account on my Windows 10 but I don't understand how to make it active and use that instead of eM Client. At the moment I have to go to my TalkTalk mail in order to reply, if I could place the app to go straight to my TT mail i would do that. Any advice welcome but please keep it simple, 81 years old and just about coping. This is the message.

*****@tiscali.co.uk: The authentication failed due to the following reason:
“Unexpected end of stream”
(SMTP) An attempt to connect to *****@tiscali.co.uk failed. This could be caused by temporary server unavailability or incorrect settings. Do you want to check settings?





Regards
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Old 28 Jan 2021, 10:41 PM   #2
JeremyNicoll
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First, do you have just one computer? Is the machine you used to post here the one that has the problem logging-in to eM Client?

When, precisely, did your problems start?

When they did start, were they occasional, or has there been a problem every single time you tried since then?

Do you know of anything that changed on your machine at the time that the problem started? Did you install any other software, or (say) a new version of eM Client, or change your antivirus or antimalware or firewall software (if you have any of those?)?



You say "It appears I have a mail account on my Windows 10". What makes you think that? Do you mean a "Microsoft Account" ie something you use to login to Windows 10 itself?


You also say "I have to go to my TalkTalk mail in order to reply". Do you mean you use a browser to login to a TalkTalk website where you can see mails, send new ones etc?


When you first started using eM Client, did you keep notes (or screenshots) of how you configured it to login to TalkTalk? From where did you find out how to configure em Client to do this? If you go back to the place in eM Client where that's configured - where I would expect there to be definitions of the name of the TalkTalk mail server(s), possibly a userid, possibly a password, possibly one or more "port numbers" and maybe some options about how the login is to be authenticated, it would be useful to know if that is still set-up exactly as it was initially.

[The information here might help. Note that as well as the server names etc near the top of the page there's other sets of details below depending on the exact type of account you have with TT.

see: https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/...3/ta-p/2204399

That page, at the top, suggests using "IMAP" if someone has never set this up before. However if at the moment your system is configured to use "POP", don't change to "IMAP". That might add extra problems.]


Some ways that an email client can login to a server involve the client starting a conversation with the server (in a basic manner) then asking it what sort of facilities it offers and what methods of authentication it supports, then picking one and attempting to use it. I think there's a possibility that the error message you're seeing means that the initial connection and the start of that discussion is happening but the server at the far end is disconnecting because it's not being provided with the right later information.

Did you find the error message in a log file (that's to say a file showing all the commands the client tries to send to the server, and all the replies that the server sends back)? If there was such a file and there's anything before the error message, it would be helpful to know what it is. Please make absolutely sure if you show us any of that that you do NOT show us your actual userid or password.
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Old 29 Jan 2021, 01:32 AM   #3
6Antique9
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No, I have another computer running windows 7 but don’t use it much, only occasionally to use an old program. I have disconnected from the internet.
I only noticed recently, it might be coincidence but just installed updates.
I open my TT mail on the internet (told you I am non tech) this works fine
I don’t remember how or when I started using eM Client, probably when I bought my new windows 10 computer 2018. Don’t remember any notes.
When try to send or reply to an email the error message comes up and I have the choice of open account settings. Unfortunately I don’t understand what I am seeing but I have noticed the PW seems different in length. IMAP and general are the same SMPT is shorter. I have tried to make them the same but still no luck and when I do the diagnosis it fails on the SMPT I have screen shots of the error message and the settings. There is a log file full of errors reports. What you say looks terribly difficult for me to understand. Perhaps it would be best if i could get some computer tech to call and sort this out.
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Old 29 Jan 2021, 03:01 AM   #4
JeremyNicoll
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Well...

"I don’t remember how or when I started using eM Client, probably when I bought my new windows 10 computer 2018. Don’t remember any notes."


The less someone knows about how things work, the more necessary it is that they keep notes on how they set things up. All you need is a folder, with a file describing what you've done for each application, or part of Windows itself. Each time you install new software or make alterations to how it is set up, note what you did, or save screenshots. If an installer asks questions, note what choices you made. If you ever have to reinstall something, perhaps on a new computer, it's helpful to know what you did last time. It doesn't necessarily matter if you don't understand what things mean; what matters is that you can (hopefully) find out in future how you previously did things so you can replicate that.

And if in the last few days you've tried changing things, it'd help if you knew what you'd tried and whether the error messages changed at all while doing that (and what to).

Maybe TalkTalk are now enforcing a more secure way of logging in? I did look at their support forum a few hours ago, and various people have problems that might be the same as yours, but it's hard to tell.




"When try to send or reply to an email the error message comes up and I have the choice of open account settings. Unfortunately I don’t understand what I am seeing but I have noticed the PW seems different in length. IMAP and general are the same SMPT is shorter. I have tried to make them the same but still no luck and when I do the diagnosis it fails on the SMPT I have screen shots of the error message and the settings. There is a log file full of errors reports. What you say looks terribly difficult for me to understand."

Sending an email and replying to an email are the same process; both involve use of an SMTP server.

Are new mails still arriving and becoming visible in eM Client? That part of the process would be using the IMAP server.

Presumably when you login to TT "on the internet" you only use a single password. I have no way to tell if that is the same password as either/both of your server passwords. (That's the sort of thing the notes you haven't got would have been useful for.)

It might be worth resetting the eM Client passwords to whatever you use for the TT webmail system, but if these passwords are meant to be different that might make things worse.

Also... when you view passwords, do you see them as letters and digits etc, or just blobs? Sometimes when systems show blobs they deliberately do not have the same number of blobs as the number of characters in the actual passwords (so that anyone watching you type a value can't tell by counting blobs how long your password is). That might be part of why the lengths of passwords seem different.

You also said "IMAP and general are the same". What is "general"? Are there three passwords defined?


Maybe you need to ask eM Client support about this? Tell them the URL of the page which describes TT's servers etc, say you are in the "old Tiscali account" category, and ask them exactly what should be in the account settings. And tell them the error message. That "unexpected end of stream" might mean something to them. (I did actually find someone asking this on eM Client's forum, six years ago, but their problem just went away after a day or two.)


Google found me this:
https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/...l/td-p/2295088

- which is an eM Client problem with the same error message, and maybe implies that resetting your password using their website, and not using characters like "£" in it, might help. Then you'd put the same new password into eM Client, presumably.


Getting a tech to visit you ... well, personally I'd not want anyone to come into my house at the moment. At your age I'd be even less happy about that.


Screenshots: do you know how to obscure or blur-out details (userid, password if it's readable) etc? Do you have any cloud storage (eg Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox)? If you do you could put the screenshots (with some details obscured if needed) online and then copy&paste their URLs into a reply here so that we can see them. Likewise some of the logfile errors, unless it's only the message you mentioned at the start, over and over again. But again, you need to make sure you don't make anything confidential visible to other people.
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Old 29 Jan 2021, 04:34 PM   #5
6Antique9
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Well, that's me told! I am probably like many people out there, we have a reasonable knowledge of how to use a computer but know nothing about how they work. I have been under the illusion that computers can do anything, obviously not, they are bound by our errors. I don't think I have the skill or intelligence to resolve this problem so I fear I will, eventually have to seek professional help (when safe to do so) and so have to shoulder the small inconvenience of popping over to my TT web mail to reply to emails. As I have learned none of us is perfect. I am of an age when things were much more straight forward and I guess i could give some advice on how to restore antique furniture or to French polish but that doesn't mean the person I was advising could do the job satisfactory and may end up doing more damage.

Thanks at least for trying to help, stay safe and best wishes.
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Old 30 Jan 2021, 12:08 AM   #6
JeremyNicoll
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I hope you're not feeling 'got at' by how I replied.

The point about making notes is something that very few people seem to grasp. Either they think they'll remember, or they see no need for notes at all. Consider how you'd feel if none of the doctors or lawyers you've dealt with had kept notes on your cases...


I worked as a programmer (of micros and mainframes) and also a 'systems programmer' (which then meant someone who installed, customised and tested system software - so eg new versions of an OS) at a UK bank. As sysprogs, we were regarded as the technical experts (and would chase problems that caused us (the bank) outages (eg no cash machines working for a day) with software and hardware companies until we got them to admit fault and fix their products). A large part of the job was writing meaningful notes on how stuff was done.

Partly that was because months or years later a mistake in installing/configuring something might cause problems, and we had to be able to work out how it happened. Partly it was because people got paged in the middle of the night to fix things that they personally had not worked on ... so had to be able to find and read what a colleague had done.

I continue to do this when setting up my own computers. I have notes on how and why I installed and configured and used every piece of software, and the problems caused by bad decisions, and how I got around them (if I did) for every home pc I have ever had. Whenever I install something to try it out, and later get rid of it, I keep the notes on how I installed and removed it, but also why I chose not to keep it, what it did well (if anything) and what it was poor at doing.

Right now I'm about to start setting-up a Win 10 pc, having used Win 8.1 for years. One of the first things I will do is skim through the notes on how I set up W8, and then the W8.1 upgrade, to see if that reminds me of a need to find an equivalent solution on Win 10.


It's becoming rarer for personal / home-user PC software to be properly documented. One of the email clients I have used, now unfortunately no longer supported, came with a well-written explanatory manual - with screenshots of every feature, explanations of how things worked, and helped people understand why they might or might not choose to turn certain features on or off. That ran to about 115 pages of A4.

Some of the PC software I use used to be an IBM product, so although it's now developed and maintained by volunteers, when they took it on they also got the proper documentation from IBM and they maintain that in sync with the things they do to the product. There's thousands of pages of detailed documentation for that. No-one reads it all, but it's available & acts as a reference for what every last bit of the product is meant to do.


Anyway... if I, as an "expert", think I NEED to keep notes in things, I think everyone else needs to do so too.
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Old 31 Jan 2021, 12:45 AM   #7
6Antique9
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not really

Not got at but the picture I get is of someone who presumes we all think alike. I am afraid we are all different and have greater priorities than the loss of the ability to send an email. Plus the fact that you techy guys use a different language to us mere mortals. Computer are fallible and so are we. I can not in all honesty accept the comparison of keeping notes on how or when I installed some program or other with a doctor or lawyer. It appears at 81 I am getting nearer to not understanding the meaning of anything because things are being designed by young people for young people. One grouch I have is the assumption that we all want everything to be on our mobile phones. We recently had our online "repeat prescription" account moved to app on our phones. Problems occurred because it wasn't setup for a couple whose email address was the same one and as my wife is disable and can't use a telephone this caused us unwanted problems and became too complicated for me to resolve. Nothing wrong with the old system just change for change sake.
Anyway, nice to communicate with you, please stay safe.

Regards
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Old 31 Jan 2021, 01:42 AM   #8
JeremyNicoll
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I don't presume we all think alike. I've had 40 years experience of supporting users who don't even do the simplest things (like take screenshots) and then when some disaster befalls their system are desperate for help which they're unlikely to get. I constantly advise people to make notes, take screenshots etc, to help them to help themselves, or to help them provide pertinent information for techies trying to help them.

The point about a doctor or lawyer is that they deal with long-running complex issues ... and can't remember every last detail of everyone's cases, so they make notes. It also means other doctors/lawyers can take over those cases.

A computer system is a very complex machine. Normal non-technical users don't need to know /how/ they work, and I certainly don't expect them to... but if they haven't noted things, or taken screenshots, of choices they made when setting something up, then change those settings (while experimenting when trying to fix a problem, and noted the exact effects of each experiment) it's very unlikely that anyone else will be able to work out what the consequences of that sequence of events was. The eventual fix is much more likely to be a new set of definitions (ie in your case a new account definition, or a reinstalled product, or - if you're really unlucky - a reinstalled OS and client etc), and - depending on how that's handled, maybe lost data. For years I've read of many users who get their systems into such a mess that they reinstall the whole lot, which really shouldn't be necessary.

I'm suggesting that in future you at least take screenshots that you can show to other people, to make their job easier.
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Old 31 Jan 2021, 05:24 PM   #9
6Antique9
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The thing about my email problem is I didn't cause it it just happened out of the blue. The only thing I can relate to it would be the updates. I am not sending emails on a daily basis so would be unable to pin point when this problem started only when It first happened when I attempted to send an email. Life is filled with numbers and passwords we are expected to keep confidential but also remember without writing them down for security. Screen shots for every program you install! Normally if I install a program and it turns out to be not what i wanted I uninstall it. So perhaps I should uninstall the eM Client and try another or just use my TT account. You see, I don't even know the difference between my TT account and what the eM client thing is. I have screen shots of the account and the settings of IMAP and SMPT etc but no way of attaching them to this chat, not sure they would tell you anything.

Regards
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Old 31 Jan 2021, 06:47 PM   #10
FredOnline
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Perhaps you would consider trying Thunderbird Portable?

As opposed to installing it on your computer, Thunderbird Portable can be installed to a specific folder (create a sub folder to documents, for example) or to a folder on an external hard drive or flash drive.

That way, if it doesn't work out for you, all you have to do is delete the folder where you installed it, and it's gone.

https://download.cnet.com/Mozilla-Th...-10526818.html


Just noticed: You've mentioned "SMPT" a few times, do check you are actually using "SMTP" in your settings.

Last edited by FredOnline : 31 Jan 2021 at 06:52 PM. Reason: Just noticed:
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Old 31 Jan 2021, 08:35 PM   #11
6Antique9
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Hello FredOnline

Thanks for the suggestion, this computer world gets more complicated and confusing by the day. Miss the old typewriter and stamp. When you say check I am using SMPT. When I go in to the eM Client menu accounts this what i see.

Accounts. General. Account name is email address. My name then email address. In Authentication Log in name is correct then password 14 digits. Below is SMPT and IMAP ticked. Then move to IMAP. Host is imap.tiscali.co.uk. Port 993. Authentication “Use identity credentials: user name **@tiscali.co.uk PW 14 digits. Move to SMPT. Host smpt.tiscali.co.uk. Port. 587 Security Policy: Force usage of SSL/TLS. Authentication: Server requires authentication ticked. Use these credentials ticked. User name **@tiscali.co.uk PW 12 digits. Move to diagnostics: On this page you can verify your account settings and attempt to fix potential problems. IMAP. Unknown. SMPT unknown. Then click diagnose and fix. IMAP comes up with a tick OK. But SMPT fails. It runs through several settings. Hope this makes sense, the only thing that seems wrong is the PW number of digits, 2 seem right and one is different.
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Old 31 Jan 2021, 08:40 PM   #12
FredOnline
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Just to be clear, SMPT is wrong, it should be SMTP.

Where or if it says SMPT you need to correct it.
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Old 31 Jan 2021, 08:43 PM   #13
6Antique9
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Typo

Sorry, typo should read SMTP
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Old 31 Jan 2021, 10:58 PM   #14
FredOnline
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I've been looking at eM Client (I have a free unused account).

If you go into Menu/Tools/Accounts:

That opens a Accounts box with General/IMAP/SMTP/Diagnostics tabs

Click on the account in question, then on the General tab, go to Authentication.

Ensure that your login name (username@tiscali.co.uk) and password are correct. Overtype the existing information to ensure it's correct.

Click on the SMTP tab, it should read:

smtp.tiscali.co.uk
587
Use SSL/TLS if available

Authentication - Tick the server requires authentication
Use identity credentials

Then go to the diagnostics tab and test.
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Old 31 Jan 2021, 11:34 PM   #15
6Antique9
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eureka

I don't believe it as Richard Wilson used to say. It worked. Thank you so much, I will keep your instructions safely. That should please Jeremy . I suppose he is right I should have made notes, thank goodness we have people like you to help educate us.

Thanks again and please stay safe. Incidentally you have saved me over £100, that was the charge for a home visit from a local tech firm. I didn't take them up on the offer because we are in the vulnerable category and I have just had my vaccination. I will put a fiver in any charity you would like to choose.

Thanks again
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