A customer had problems downloading emails using outlook express.

OE would start downloading, I’d start the progress window, and I see its downloading message 1 of 25. Then it goes to message 2, etc.

At message 4, it stops, and gives an error 0x800CCC0F. A search on the net shows nothing useful, except to try reinstalling OE… but it seems that OE and IE are tied together, so you need to remove and reinstall both…

I try a few more times, but I get the same error, but at different points: sometimes with message 9, sometimes at message 6.

Each time, OE would start downloading the first message, as it wasn’t marked as having been downloaded… so OE accumulates many duplicate emails.

I figure: I’ll try using the bigpond webmail, so I can only make 1 email available at a time, then OE can “digest” the emails and I might pinpoint a corrupt email.

But I quickly find the bigpond webmail gives me a mostly blank screen…

OK, plan B: I try bigpond webmail on firefox… but that gives similar results.

Plan C: Install foxmail… but it just sits at message 9 and won’t go past it.

At this stage, its getting late, so I promise to test webmail from the office (to eliminate a telstra problem, or a local pc problem).

At the office, bigpond webmail works flawlessly. So I move some of the larger emails to a temporary mail folder. I then make an appointment to revisit, and prepare myself to reinstall OE and IE.

Once onsite again, I look at webmail one more time, but its the same blank screen. At this point, I close the webmail window without logging out… So I try logging in again, except I’m not given the login window… but instead I see the webmail inbox screen… fantastic.

After some experimenting, I find I can get webmail to half work by hitting the refresh button whenever I get a mostly blank screen.

So now, I get OE to download 2 or 3 emails at a time… and OE is able to download all the pending messages… no errors… Hmmm, I was expecting at least 1 error / corrupt email.

I decide to give OE a bigger test: I email a 1Mb attachment back to “myself”… and it also works perfectly.

So I tell the customer its all tentatively fixed… but let me know if the problem reappears.