Top Issues

Every month we receive problem reports that help us identify a trend in email usage. The top issues are listed here, as this is likely the issues that you are most likely to encounter.

1.1 - Outlook Express no longer send/recieve

You start to encounter error in Outlook Express telling you that there it can not send or receive emails, despite having been using your Outlook Express for quite some time, receiving and sending emails regularly.

This usually happens after a period of time where Outlook Express seems to be synchronizing with the mail server, you may even manage to download a few emails before this happen.

It is likely that your Outlook Express mailbox is full. While our server will continue to receive emails for you, you can no longer send or receive because there is no room in your local Outlook Express to add those information.
The file size limit of 2GB is effectively your mailbox size limit.
To verify if this is the case,
- Open Outook Express, select Tools - Options - Maintenance
- Click the Store Folder... button, and copy the path down
- Click Windows Start and select the Run... command - Paste the path into the "Open:" textbox, click the Ok button
Note the file size, if it exceeds 2GB (or 2,000MB), then you will need to take action. Simplest and quickest of which is to rename the Outlook Express folder.

1.2 - Outlook no longer send/recieve

some version of Outlook behaves similarly to Outlook Express (see above) in the 2GB file size limit. Although you can choose to compress the mail folder to delay it slightly, or enable the auto archive funtion to workaround the file size limit.

To verify if your file has reach the size limit,
- Open Outook, select Tools - Options - Mail Setup
- Click the Data Files... button, double click the default Personal Folder
- Copy the "Filename" location (note the "Compact Now" button, which you may need to click later).
- Click Windows Start and select the Run... command - Paste the path into the "Open:" textbox, click the Ok button
Note the file size, if it exceeds 2GB (or 2,000MB), then you will need to take action. Simplest and quickest of which is to delete away unwanted emails, and compact your Personal Folder.

Modem Issues

Successful sending and receiving of emails depend on valid and reliable Internet connection. If that connection is broken, all pending Internet communications, including incoming and outgoing emails, will be interrupted.
If you use a dial-up modem to connect to the Internet, you may encounter the following errors...

2.1 - Modem is not dialing out

a. Check the phone line to see that there is a valid dial-tone, sometimes it is due to faulty cable or loosed socket. In some extreme cases such as during severe thunderstorm, the line between you and the telephone company's exchange may be flooded, in which case you will have to contact your telephone company to resolve the issue.

b. You may have accidentally erased the phone number, verify that the number that you are dialing out is valid.

2.2 - Busy Signal

Busy signals are caused by the phone company or your ISP's inability to handle customer demand. It usually happens during congested hours.

2.3 - Unanswered Call

Unanswered calls are caused by the ISP's phone company, which provides the dial-in lines, or your ISP, which hosts the equipments to receive your call. It usually happens during congested hours, but can be due to your location as well; there are some places in Johor where your dial-out will be unanswered 90% of the time. Contact your ISP for help, or change your ISP.

2.4 - Call Interrupted / Dropped

Dropped calls are caused by your phone company, the ISP's phone company, or your ISP. It usually happens during congested hours.

2.5 - Slow Connection

It normally happens during congested hours and is due to your ISP's inability to handle demand; if it consistently happens outside of the congested hours, it is either due to your phone company's equipments, or the cable quality between your site and your phone company's exchange.

Please note that from time to time your ISP may perform equipment upgrades, which can slow down international Internet traffic significantly for a short period of time.

2.6 - ISDN Connection Issues

Establishing an Internet connection via ISDN is almost instantaneous, most ISDN issues are having to do with network congestion, with authentication error being the most frequently encountered problem.

At any rate, it may please you to note that ISDN lines are considered "premium" by Telekom Malaysia, and they will usually resolve most issues within two days.

Update September 2006: ISDN line supports have all but evaporated in Johor Bahru. The local Telekom Malayisa's technicians simply do not understand ISDN technology. Expect more down time as compare to ADSL.

Update January 2008: The preferred connection is now SDSL.

2.7 - ADSL Connection Issues

Once properly configured, any connectivity issue is usually only temporary, lasting between 15 minutes to 3 hours.

With Telekom's aggressive promotional campaign, ADSL quality is spotty. If you experience ADSL down time of more than 1 hour, you should contact your ISP immediately. ISP response time usually ranges from 1 day to 2 weeks, sometimes never.

Update December 2007: Telekom tech support now forces you to go through a scripted routine if you call to complain about problem. If you do not go through these steps, you can not lodge a case. If you go through with it and get a case number, they will send a technician to provide on-site examination. If the problem doesn't appear when the technician arrives, the case will be closed with you being the cause of the problem and you will be billed RM50.

2.8 - Authentication Failed

Even after your modem has successfully dial-up, your ISP my disconnect you for failing to authenticate.

a. Verify your user ID and password to ensure that they have not been accidentally changed, either by you or your dialer software. If you share the dial-up account with more than one party, check with them on whether the password has been changed.

b. If you use TMNet pre-paid or Jaring Top-up accounts, ensure that your account still has sufficient credit.

c. It can be due to your ISP's authentication server temporarily unreachable, either due to network congestion or server down. Try again later.

Email

If you have successfully established and maintained a reliable connection to the Internet, but still encountered problem with the sending or receiving of emails, it may be due to one or more of the followings...

3.1 - Can't Receive Emails

99.9% of the time it is due to wrong email address that the sender used to send email to you. Make sure that:

a. You gave the correct email address to the sender

b. The email sender did not mistype your email address

c. You did configure your email account with the correct reply address

3.2 - Emails sent to you were rejected

It could be due to: wrong email address, false-positive spam filter

a. Wrong email address : this is usually the case if the email was bounced back to the sender saying that the receipient doesn't exist, or the server has problem resolving the MX/A record, or the email simply can't be delivered because the server can not resolve the address due to wrong domain name or incorrect address format. Most usually the email address was keyed in incorrectly. Provide the correct email address to the sender, and make sure that the entire address is typed in.; do not rely on the "recall" function of the email client, as most email clients might remember the wrong email address.

b. False-positive spam : the sender might have composed the email in such a way that it is somehow identified as spam. Advice the sender the phrase it differently, and/or change the email to plain-text. This error is most common during severe spam storm, when we have to raise the filter sensitivity to cope.

3.3 - Can't Retrieve (Download) Emails

It could be due to: large emails, Internet congestion, wrong email client configuration or email server temporary unavailable.

a. Large Emails : there could be one or more emails in your mail box that are too large and takes more than a few minutes to be downloaded. For example, under the best condition, a ten megabyte file takes about thirty minutes to be downloaded over dial-up line. You may want to consider using the supplied webmail client to view the subject and decide if the email is worth downloading or should be deleted straight away.

b. Congestion : if the traffic is congested, the same ten megabyte file can take four times as long (more than two hours) to be downloaded. Worst yet, you may be disconnected half way during download. So the best cause of action is to try again at a later time.

c. If you have configured your email client properly, you should copy down the error message and contact your email account administrator.

d. The email server may be temporarily unreachable. You should try again at a later time.

3.4 - Can't Send Emails

It could be due to large attachment, wrong email client configuration, or your email server requiring you to provide password to send email. Check your email client configuration to ensure that you have enable "SMTP (outgoing) Server" to use authentication, and that you are using the correct port number.

3.5 - Emails Bounced

If you receive an email from the automatic responder of your email provider, saying that it failed to deliver your email for you, this email is "bounced", which can be due to one or more of the following reasons:

a. Mistyped email address. Verify with the email recipient that the email address you use is EXACTLY the same as intended.

b. Mail box doesn't exist. The recipient has moved on and his/her account has been removed, or the recipient has just joined the new domain and his/her account has not been activated yet.

c. Mail server temporarily unreachable. Email systems are not 100% reliable: the receipient's server can be offline or the network can become congested. Under normal circumstances the sending email server will attempt delivery at a later time, and in rare situation, these subsequent"resending" of emails can still result in failure and your emails "bounced". You should try sending the email again.

d. Viruses and spammers can send emails from other infected/controlled systems and make them appear to originate from you. There is nothing you can do unless those systems are yours, in which case you should clear the systems of any malwares.

3.6 - Receiving Multiple Identical (Duplicate) Emails

a. The nature of emails POP is such that the server will only set the email status as "downloaded" AFTER you've download them all. So if the email retrieving process is interrupted for any reason, your email client will restart downloading your emails from the very beginning, including those emails that have already been successfully retrieved. The interruption is usually due to large email attachment(s) or malformed emails.

b. The sender may have sent multiple emails to you. This could be due to the senders listing your email address twice as the recipient, or the sender simply sent multiple copies of the same emails to you to enhance the chance of you receiving and reading the email. In some countries this behavior is consider SPAM, in some others it is called 'Kiasu'. Talk to the sender.

c. Your email client index files can become corrupted for a variety of reasons. If it's Outlook Express, file corruptions can be the reason that the same emails are being downloaded repeatedly. (check section 5: Congested Hours)

3.7 - Sending Multiple Identical (Duplicate) Emails

Emails are typically sent via SMTP. The server will send an acknowledgement to your email client for each email successfully received by the server. If that acknowledgement is not send by the server due to server problem, or not received by your email client due to network, corrupted email composition or other client problems; that email remains in your outbox and is not considered sent. Your client will keep sending whatever emails that are in your outbox. Manually removing it from the outbox will solve this problem.

3.8 - SPAM Filter

An average email user in the United States spent between half-hour to two hours cleaning the inbox of unwanted junk emails*. Most ISPs now offer SPAM filtering technology to combat SPAM, usually with mixed result, either accidentally removing legitimate emails or letting too much SPAM filtering through.

Our SPAM filter is active/passive: obvious spams are rejected. For emails received, a special ascii graphical header is added to suspicious emails, and the message subject is prefixed with the tag "[SPAM]". Users can easily configure their email client to move all emails to a temporary folder

* Statistically, for every 5 good emails that you received, you would also receive 1 suspected spam and 1 actual spam. You would not recieve 68 actual spams/viruses that were rejected outright. The statistic varies depending on your email usage behavior.

3.9 - Outlook/Outlook Express can't retain password

When you connect to your Internet service provider (ISP) to retrieve messages from a Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) server, your password is not retained even though you chose to save the password. Attempts to reenter the correct password fail to resolve the behavior.

3.10 - Backing up Outlook Express data

How to back up and restore your messages, Address Book, mail accounts, and news accounts in Outlook Express 5 and later.

3.11 - Recommended Email Client

Infoarch recommends Outlook 2000 and above.

Outlook Express Error

Most Windows users use Outlook Express as the default email client.

4.1 - List of Common Outlook Express Errors

If you receive any of the following error codes, the problem may be related to your ISP or the Internet, and may be only temporarily. You should try again at a later time.

If you receive the following error codes, your mail box configuration may be incorrect. You should refer to your e-mail account information provided by your ISP to rectify any incorrect settings.

The following error codes are problems relating to your e-mail client or certain missing information. Simply ensure that you have supplied all the necessary information.

4.2 - OE repeatedly download the same emails

If your POP3 mail account is configured to "leave a copy of messages on the server", it sometimes happens that OE downloads the same messages each time you send and receive. This is caused by a damaged "Pop3uidl.dbx" file in your Identity's store folder. This file keeps track of which messages on the server have already been downloaded and should therefore be skipped on subsequent downloads. To fix the problem, simply delete the "Pop3uidl.dbx" file. The next time you check for mail, all the messages on the server will be downloaded again, but a new "Pop3uidl.dbx" will be created that should work properly on subsequent mail checks.

Congested Hours

The incumbent ISPs in Malaysia are TMNet and Jaring. Follows are the network congested hours provided as a rough indication for Southern Johor region only, and is heavily dependant on your actual physical location. For example, even though TMNet has a dial-up node in Kulai, Kulai is severely affected by evening peak hours.

5.1 - TMNet Congested Hours

If you are TMNet subscriber, you are likely to encounter connection problem during certain hours; we have tabulated those hours in the following table for your reference (Monday to Friday) :

The failure rate column shows the probability of you encountering a problem if you stay connected for five minutes or beyond; a number of 80% means that statistically, every 8 out of 10 connection attempts are problematic (Note that even after you have successfully dial-in to TMNet, the longer you stay on line, the higher the chances of you getting disconnected).

5.2 - Jaring Congested Hours

If you are Jaring subscriber, you should be glad to know that the network is much better managed, and the likelihood of you encountering difficulty is lower :

The failure rate column shows the probability of you encountering a problem if you stay connected for five minutes or beyond; a number of 80% means that statistically, every 8 out of 10 connection attempts are problematic (Note that even after you have successfully dial-in to Jaring, the longer you stay on line, the higher the chances of you getting disconnected).