Email Acting Funny

[Kepis]

Ok guys hoping someone can help me here as this is driving me nuts.

I use Thunderbird for my email client on a POP3 basis and as of this evening im getting email notifications, ie a sound plays and the little icon on the task bar telling me i have new mail, but, when i go to my inbox, there is absolutely nothing there?.

Ive updated & run anti virus and anti spyware/malware and nothing has been found whatsoever, im running Windows 7 and everything is up to date, now what is strange is i can go for 30 minutes or more with nothing and then i'll get say three notifications in quick succession, but no mails are received.

I even thought it was some of my email rules acting up, so i checked the rule logs and there is nothing there, ive turned all the rules off thinking it may be one of those rules deleting a messgae from the server, but geting enough of it to trigger a notification, nope, i still get the notifications and no mail withthe filters turned off.

Ive backed up the messages, address book etc and reinstalled Thunderbird, but it still happens, ive even restored from the previous backup and it still does it, i have no items in my inbox, deleted items that may be "stuck" and ive rebooted just to be sure.

Any ideas, because im stumped?, do any of our IT guru's know if people like TalkTalk and Gmail are having server problems and sending out packets that may be enough to trigger a received response, but have nothing there in the form of a mail?

Cheers guys

 

[Adze]

I've had something similar with Tbird in the past with a Yahoo! account. IIRC the problem was email arriving and being moved to the spam folder on the server but the spam folder was never downloaded locally - so each time Tbird did an automatic check for messages I'd get an alert for a new message. If it's gmail, try clearing out your spam folder by logging on through a browser instead of using Tbird. Shout if that's not it and I'll see if I can find anything else.

 

[wicca]

Kep, I know nothing about the technicalities but my email notified me yesterday.."Account suspended"..no reason given. The times I use email is minimal compared I suspect with most folk..3 or 4 times a month at most. The parent company or is it supplier? is called Swivel creations inc: obviously American.
I managed to find an email address for them and emailed them today from an Internet cafe..My email has returned to normal..no explanation at all but the lady in the cafe said a number of her casual customers had also experienced similar problems with other email companies recently...May of course be sheer coincidence that your's is playing up too but mine went on the blink for no apparent reason.

 

[chris_irwin]

Sounds stupid, but have you checked your spam inbox? Not sure if thunderbird would give you a mail notification for spam or not, but worth checking

 

[Kepis]

Cheers guys, the Spam Folder both locally and via Gmail is empty as is the trash folder, i run a couple of websites and ive been on the respedctive servers for them to check the settings and nothing out of the ordinary that i can see, ive asked the hosting company to check as well, just in case something is up the swanni at their end.

@Adze, ive not known Thunderbird to notify about spam mails before, but hey tis worth checking - thanks mate

 

[Adze]

What version of Tbird are you using Kepis? Are you on the current release (v9.01 if memory serves)?

 

[Kepis]

Im on 9.0.1, ive also gone way back to 2.0.0.24 (yep that old) and it does it in that version as well, im thinking it's a mail server problem, im slowly going through my pop3 mail accounts and disabling them all bar one at a time and leaving one at a time on auto fetch, to see which one (s) the problem occurs on, figured that way, i will know if it's a gmail account or one of the others that's doing it and will have a good starting point.

Ive logged a "ticket" on the Mozilla Help Forum as well, just in case other Tbird users are finding the same thing, it only started happening yesterday and ive not updated anything or loaded new software, it's still doing it this morning, although not as frequently, which makes me think it's a mail server problem?.

 

[Adze]

Is all mail marked as read in every account? Do you regularly compact your mail folders?

 

[rik_uk3]

I dumped tbird when I moved to Windows 7 and now use Microsoft Live Mail
http://email.about.com/od/livemaildesktoptips/qt/et_get_gmail.htm

 

[dwardo]

I would just try another mail client and see what happens. This should rule out either client or server.
There is the old fashioned way of telnetting to the mail server and running a "stat" this will tell you in plain repsonses what mail is on the server.
Google telnet and mail client or this is the first i found. http://techhelp.santovec.us/pop3telnet.htm

 

[Kepis]

Certainly is, inbox is empty, drafts is empty, junk is empty, sent is empty, deleted is empty, folders are compacted regulary, i think i may have identified the account it's happening on, as i disabled it and so far no erroneous notifiations have occurred, if it is this one i will lodge a ticket with the hosting company - fingers crossed.

 

[Kepis]

I dumped tbird when I moved to Windows 7 and now use Microsoft Live Mail
http://email.about.com/od/livemaildesktoptips/qt/et_get_gmail.htm

Tried it, didnt like it

 

[Adze]

I dumped tbird when I moved to Windows 7 and now use Microsoft Live Mail
http://email.about.com/od/livemaildesktoptips/qt/et_get_gmail.htm

I dumped Windows 7 when I moved to Debian

 

[rik_uk3]

Played with Mint and Debian, stuck with W7 Still got one of them on an old laptop I think.

 

[Kepis]

Got it figured, it's something to do with Gmail, i went through a process of elimination and 'turned off' my pop3 accounts one by one and waited to see if it still happened, in the end i just had a gmail account left as active on the list and the problem stayed, i deactivated that from the auto download option and it stopped, i reactivated the Gmail account on auto download and bingo there it is again, deactivated, problem gone.

Gawd only knows what Google are up to (again), but whatever it, is it's down to them, i dare say they will get it fixed eventually.

Thanks for your help chaps, must go and finish packing for the Sussex meet now.

 

[ged]

If you want to find out exactly what's going on, disable all except the problem account and start a packet capture program like 'tcpdump' recording all packets in and out of the computer until the problem occurs. Stop the recording when the problem has happened. Note the exact time according to the computer that you heard the alert, that will help narrow down where in the recording to look.

Examine the recording using 'Wireshark'. It's very instructive.