Intermittent problem sending e-mails

My wife and I have 3 computers, at different locations. All 3 use Win 7 and SeaMonkey, with everything updated.

Here's the problem. Most e-mails will send OK but once or twice a day one will cause this error message (or one very similar to it) to appear:


Sending of message failed.
An error occurred sending mail. Unable to authenticate to SMTP server smtp.att.yahoo.com. It does not support authentication (SMTP-AUTH) but you have chosen to use authentication. Uncheck 'Use name and password' for that server or contact your service provider.


Interestingly, the computers connect to different servers. One connects to Comcast, one to U-Verse, and one to Charter Communications. So I suspect the problem isn't with the servers.

Also, the problem is intermittent. Most messages will send, others result in that error message. And when the message does fail, sometimes a single try to Send again will work, other times it may take up to 5 retries -- with that error message appearing each time -- before it will go. But whether 1 retry or 2 or as many as 5 retries, it will eventually go.

Why are were getting that error message, and why the inconsistencies? Ideas?

 

Hi BOBBO, does this error occur on all 3 computers or just one?

Are all comps going through one Router/Modem? Neil.

 

All 3 computers have the same problem and get the same error message. They're hundreds of miles from each other and, as I said earlier, they connect through different services. I should add that this problem has been going on for 3 or 4 months now.

 

Wow, hundreds of miles apart - all running W7 - I would say there is a compatibility problem with the OS.
Out of my league BOBBO so I'll leave it to someone more up to date with W7. Neil.

 

Is the problem only with Yahoo ? Do you have any other mail accounts ? Can you send through them without any problem ?

 

I had to think about that for a bit. Almost all the time we both use SeaMonkey as our e-mail client, which is set up with each of the 3 ISP's I mentioned above to work with yahoo.mail. Occasionally one or both of us will be traveling and using someone else's system and will use IE to reach our yahoo.mail account. That's the extent of our e-mailing.

What baffles me about this problem is its inconsistency. Intermittent problems of any kind are always especially troublesome to sort out, but with this problem, even when an occasional message gets stuck, it will eventually go, whether after a single retry or up to 5. All 3 of our computers have the same behavior problem even though each one is served by a different ISP and each one is far from any of the others. Very strange.

 

I also have the same problem with Yahoo & its also intermittent but is only for 5-10 minutes, after which everything is ok.

Maybe some Yahoo server problem ?

 

UPDATE: I haven't had the problem for 3 days now. I sent out 6 e-mails Saturday, 5 yesterday, and 2 so far today. Not a burp. I have a suspicion as to why. Either late Friday or early Saturday there was an update for SeaMonkey that downloaded itself and just asked permission to install. I approved, of course, and have had no e-mail issues since. That's not definite proof, since I often went several messages in a row with no trouble before one would trigger that error message. So I won't mark this thread as Resolved yet, but here's hoping!

 

Rats! I've been sending half a dozen e-mails a day the past two days, and once yesterday and twice today I got that same dirty rotten lousy stinking error message. Yesterday's took just a single retry, one of today's took one and the other two before they went out. * Ppffftttt!!! *

 

Bobbo,
if understand you issue correctly, the problem is with a Yahoo account, set up in your Seamonkey mail. Do I understand correctly? Is it a free Yahoo, or a for pay Yahoo?
I have free Yahoo, which I have set up in my Seamonkey, and Thunderbird. I do very little sending, and have XP. But, the SMTP is set to send with my primary ISP (Cox), which allows me to send "foreign" addresses, up to a point. I get a lot of newsletters in Yahoo, but, I must have sent only two or three times, in a year. Why is your problem intermittent? Typical of Yahoo.

 

I wasn't especially aware of my having a Yahoo account as such, it's just part of my server name: pop.att.yahoo.com. Maybe they're the same thing. In any case, it's free. I'm pretty sure that's the server name on all three of the computers I originally described, which use three different ISP's in three widely separated geographical locations -- all using SeaMonkey and all occasionally experiencing that error message.

This problem has only been going on for what seems like three or four months. I wonder why Yahoo would start misbehaving like this after we'd been using that same server name without trouble for many years.

When we're away from our usual connections, we use IE and yahoo.mail to send and receive messages. The most recent occasion for that was this January. We didn't have any problem then and we never had the problem while traveling prior to then. Perhaps that's not significant, because the problem cropped up for the first time at home more recently after that time. Maybe it would happen on the road now, too, maybe not.

Since we can successfully send e-mails after getting the error message, with from one to five retries, the problem is really more a nuisance than something more serious. But it is annoying, and its being so intermittent and inconsistent is what baffles me. I wonder if contacting Yahoo would produce anything. Do they have a forum or BBS?

 

Probably no help, as Yahoo is Microsoftfile, and you use Seamonkey. Yahoo makes all sorts of changes, and, in fact, it is possible that your problem started when I could not use its POP server, even to receive mail. I set up my mail as IMAP, and started receiving it regularly.
But since Cox lets me send Yahoo through its SMTP, I do not even bother setting up Yahoo SMTP.