************************** Checking Your Email ************************** In addition to causing problems for you, too-frequent mail checking is an inappropriate and inconsiderate use of system resources, and could be considered a violation of your Access Policy. Following are instructions about how to change the check mail timer on several popular email programs. You have two choices: turn off the automatic checking of mail (recommended), or check for mail less frequently. If you turn off the automatic checking of mail, your mail will still be checked when you first open the program (in most cases), and anytime you click the "Check Mail" icon in whatever email program you are using. For most users, this is sufficient. Netscape Navigator Mail: ------------------------------------------------ Open Netscape Go to the menu Options | Mail & News Preferences Click the Servers tab Change the "Check for Mail" option to "Never", or "Every 20 minutes" Netscape Communicator Mail: ------------------------------------------------ Open Netscape Communicator Go to the menu Edit | Preferences Expand the Mail and Groups listing (click on the plus) Click on Mail Server Click the More Options button Uncheck the box in front of "Check Mail Every __ minutes", or check it and enter "20" minutes Eudora Email: ------------------------------------------------ Open Eudora Go to the Tools | Options menu Click on the Checking Mail option "Check for mail every _0_ minutes" to turn off automatic check, or change it to "...every 20 minutes". Microsoft Internet Mail (with Internet Explorer 3.0x) ------------------------------------------------------ Open Internet Mail Go to the menu Mail | Options Click on the Read tab Uncheck the option "Check for new messages every ___ minutes", or check the option and change it to "...every 20 minutes" Microsoft Exchange/Inbox/Outlook/etc... ------------------------------------------------ Some Microsoft products do not automatically check for mail - you must click the "Send/Receive" button to tell it to check for new mail. There is nothing to change with these programs. ************************** Corrupt messages ************************** If your email program gets part way through downloading your messages, and stops with an error message on the same message every time, that message may be corrupt. About the only way to get past it is to delete it. All users have the ability to look at their mail directly on Smartnet's system, using the Pine email program. If you are using Windows 95, log in as you usually do (but keep your email program CLOSED), then go to an MSDOS prompt (Start | Programs | MSDOS Prompt). At the DOS prompt, type "telnet smart.net". Another window will open and ask you to log in. If you have a Basic PPP account, you will be placed automatically into Pine. If you do not, you may have to type "pine" to open Pine. Once you are in Pine, type the letter "i" to view the message in your Inbox. Highlight the message that is giving you the problem by scrolling down with arrow keys on your keyboard, and press the letter "d" for Delete. The type "q" to Quit Pine (be careful to leave the other messages alone!), and exit to Exit your session (if you are not automatically logged off when you quit Pine). Your mail should retrieve as normal. ************************** Very large messages ************************** If you have a message with a large attachment, you may have problems retrieving it. You can delete the message (see above) if you don't want it, or you can try a couple of things to get it retrieved. The first thing to try is _leave your computer_. If you are downloading a large message and trying to do other things on the Internet (like Web browsing) at the same time, the tasks are competing with each other, and both will be slow. Your email download may get so slow that it times out. Allowing the email to completely download before doing anything else that uses your modem will not only make things faster, but will increase the odds of the message being successfully retrieved. You can also try tweaking your modem settings a little. Most modems are set up by default for "Data Compression". This is great for downloading large text files, but doesn't increase performance a lot for binary files. It is better to turn it off. In Windows 3.1, this may not be possible. In Windows 95, you can set this in your modem properties. To disable Data compression for your Smartnet connection, double click on My Computer, and double click on Dial-Up Networking. Right click ONE TIME on your Smartnet connection, and choose Properties from the menu that appears. Click the Configure button, and then the Advanced button. Uncheck the option for "Compress Data". If that option is grayed out, then you cannot adjust this setting. You can also try adjusting the rate at which your modem sends packets. It may be that your modem cannot handle the data at the rate at which it is being transmitted. Follow the instructions in the previous paragraph, this time clicking the "Port Settings" button instead of the Advanced button. You will see two adjustment bars, one for Receive Buffer and one for Transmit Buffer. If both bars are all the way to the right, try adjusting them one notch toward the left. Good luck!
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