Since upgrading from v6 I've had severe problems receiving emails, on 2 laptops, one running XP Home SP3 and the other Windows 7 64 bit. Both use ZoneAlarm free firewall. Both have multiple email accounts. Some of these accounts on both laptops needs SSL in order to work with our old ISP accessed from our new ISP.
The problem is a bit random and may be cleared by restarting the laptop, but often this doesn't work. Multiple restarts may eventually enable Outlook to receive. Sending usually is not affected.
Other symptoms: no Avast Outlook Plugin splash screen when I launch Outlook; Avast Plugin doesn't appear where I'd expect to see it (Tools-Options-Other-Advanced-Add-In Manager\COM Add-Inns); on the windows 7 machine only one of the two SSL accounts are detected by Avast. Disabling avast shields and\or zonealarm doesn't help, if avast has been loaded at startup.
I have tried completely uninstalling avast 7 and 6 in safe mode using the utility, then reinstalling, but this did not cure the problem on either laptop. So reluctantly I've completely uninstalled Avast and installed MSE which doesn't give as much protection but at least we can receive emails
