Jeremy's Weblog

I recently graduated from Harvard Law School. This is my weblog. It tries to be funny. E-mail me if you like it. For an index of what's lurking in the archives, sorted by category, click here.

Monday, January 19, 2004

Boring computer-related interlude. I just sent the following e-mail to the Harvard helpdesk. I'm sure they'll get back to me speedily but if anyone enjoys trying to solve what's probably a basic and simple computer problem, and, in the scheme of things, not really that big a deal, but still sort of a pain, feel free to read and e-mail me back the answer. Otherwise, feel free to skip this. There's no funny here:

I live in Harvard affiliated housing. Since I moved in, with no problems, I've been using Outlook Express to read and send mail from my undergraduate (Princeton) alumni account, using a POP3 and SMTP setup like their instructions say. All of a sudden, sometime last Monday afternoon, it stopped working -- I get an error message from Outlook when it goes to check: "The server responded with an error. Account: 'mail.alumni.princeton.edu', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR access denied', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800CCC90"

The web interface Princeton provides has worked, so I know it's not my username and password or my account that's messed up. And I didn't make any changes at all to my computer, or where I check e-mail from -- the problem happened all of a sudden. And I'm able to check my law school mail (with Eudora) and surf the web no problem.

I'm not sure if it's a problem on my computer's end, or Harvard's network that's blocking Port 110 or something like that. (I e-mailed the Princeton helpdesk and they said it wasn't a problem on their end.) But the webmail interface is terribly inconvenient and I really need to know how to get Outlook to work again, or something equivalent.

Thanks so much for your help.