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dd40

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Can send mail but not receive although identical setup to other pc that works fine

I've recently bought a laptop to roam the house with so added a wireless router to my desktop setup and hooked up the laptop wirelessly.
I have outlook express on my desktop and that has always worked fine using my ntl email address and still works fine now.
The laptop has outlook on it so I mirrored all the settings from my desktop on that but it won't receive mail. I can send mail fine from both the desktop and the laptop, but only the desktop will receive mail on that address - why is this?
I can send fine from the laptop but when I reply to that mail from my work account, it just goes straight back to the desktop mailbox.
I'm completely out of ideas - any ideas on what the problem might be?
Running xp on both in case that's relevant
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war1
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Greetings, dd40 !

1. Register an important send/receive library file.  Go to Start > Run and type regsvr32 inetcomm.dll

2. Check if antivirus email check is slowing sending and receiving.  Disable it. Check if other programs running in the background is interfering. Disable one at a time the Firewall, antispyware, antispam, and all Norton programs.

3. In the account settings, Advanced settings, change the server timeout time from 1 min to 5 min

Best wishes!
dd40,

What is the exact error message when you try to receive?
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dd40

ASKER

I don't actually get any error messages at all - it just pretends its working fine.

Strange though that after doing step 1 above I can now send mail from my desktop outlook express to my laptop (i.e both on the same address) which I couldn't do before but sending from a different email address stilll only goes to the desktop account.

Disabling virus stuff made no difference
What email account are you trying to setup?  Gmail?

Make user incoming server authentication is not selected.
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ASKER

its not selected. Its an existing mail account - its my ntl cable account. Been using it on my desktop for years. Just trying to add it to the laptop so mails can be accessed from both.

confused now. The mail I got when you posted the response above went to my laptop and not my desktop, but then I got another mail seconds later in my desktop account but not the laptop.

Seems to happen when I run that regsvr32 inetcomm.dll task - what does that do? Is it affecting it or is that just coincidence?
inetcomm.dll is an outlook file that is needed for receiving emails.  Sometimes it gets unregistered when another program overwrites it.  So I asked you to register the file.

I am not sure why you are getting this intermittent reception. On your email server, do you have email left on the server?  So that either computer can access the same email.
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ASKER

right - been experimenting

seems now that if I send an external mail it appears in whichever inbox does the send/receive first so I can make it appear in either inbox but only 1 for each message - is this normal? Can I not have both receiving mails?
You need to set up your account to leave the email on the server for a fix number of days. In Outlook Express go to Tools > Accounts.  
Double click the account in question will open the Properties box.  
Go to Advanced tab and check "leave copy of mail on server".  
Write the number of days to delete.  Click OK.

There is a similar setting in Outlook.
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ASKER

that's done it - you're a genius - thanks for all your help
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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war1
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