Intercepted Emails? avast!4.7 w/ MS Outlook

[Ameryl]

I have been having a problem for several months now, and I have been trying to find the source. For some reason, I will not receive emails that were sent to me, and the emails that I send do not go out. At first I thought the problem was a virus; I had the feeling that some kind of application was kicking in before avast! started scanning when Outlook was opened. At several points I have monitored the send/receive progress window and an email or two would be downloaded. But when I searched for them they were neither in the Junk mail nor the Inbox folders. I could not find them anywhere.   

I am not sure how to tackle this problem. It's difficult to tell whether or not they are being received by my primary email server (Comcast) because I check my email through Outlook about 99.9% of the time. I am posting this question to the forum because I thought you guys might have heard about this problem. Or you might have an idea as to what might be happening.

I am running Windows XP Professional and MS Outlook 2003. I have run avast! and ewido security suite regularly in the hopes that the virus (if that's what it is) will be removed.  The only pattern I can come close to identifying is that most times the emails that are not received are those that I have sent and others have replied to. It's hard for me to tell exactly which types of emails are not being sent from my computer. I would greatly appreciate any help with my problem. I am at a loss and extremely frustrated with this situation. Thanks in advance!! 

[alanrf]

Let's check one thing ...

Are you using the avast Outlook plugin or the avast Internet Mail provider?  There is a difference in the way they work.

I too am a customer of Comcast, I have no indication of any failure to receive or send mail to/from Comcast is happening for me with avast scanning the mail but my primary mail client is not Outlook.

However, there are no significant indications in the forums of problems with using current production versions of avast along with Outllook. 

[Lisandro]

I am running Windows XP Professional and MS Outlook 2003.

For a first check, make sure the avast plugin is not disabled into MS Outlook > Help > About > Disabled items
Also, answer Alan's questions...

[Ameryl]

I believe that I am using the avast! plug-in for MS Outlook. When I start the email program, I see a small screen showing that the plug-in is initializing. That leads me to believe that the software is activated. I did check to make sure that there were no disabled items in Outlook. I'm not sure if I helped by answering these questions, but I really appreciate your help! If you have any other ideas, I would love to hear them. Thank you both so much!

[igor]

If you see the avast! splash-screen when starting Outlook, then yes, you are using the Outlook plugin (and it's not disabled).

I'm afraid I don't have any advice regarding the described behavior... it's really strange. Do you have any anti-spam program installed? Or anything else, that might be in the mail-processing chain?

Are you able to simulate the problem? I mean, you wrote that it mostly happens with e-mails that have already been answered... if you can simulate it (most of the time at least, e.g. by sending specific message to yourself), you can disable avast! to see if it helps... even though I don't think so.

[mauserme]

Maybe its related to this

http://www.newswithviews.com/NWVexclusive/exclusive111.htm

At first the supervisor denied Comcast blocks e-mail. It was during her discussion with the Comcast supervisor that he finally admitted they do block e-mail they consider spam and unwelcome by the recipients.

According to Deanna Spingola, the Comcast supervisor said that his company makes the decision whether or not to treat e-mail as spam.

EDIT:  As a test, try using an alternate email provider (there are several free ones) to send an email you know was previously not received.  Have someone send a similar email to your alternate address.  If these are received I would suspect Comcast.  Otherwise check your spam filter settings to see if the option to automatically delete spam is enabled since this option would not give you the opportunity to read the email before deletion.