Thank you for the suggestion.
I followed your instructions and my email accounts are now working again.
However, I have a problem that I have had in the past resurface. Now, during the night when email is coming in, about 1 in 10 emails have the subject line modified with non-alphanumeric ASCII characters. When I look at these emails with my webmail interface, the subject lines are fine--no strange characters. I know last time I had this problem AVAST was to blame; but I failed to keep the emails related to how I cured this problem.
Further assistance would be appreciated. Thank you.