can't send emails using my optimum account

i don't know what happened... everything was working fine, but now I can't
send emails. When I open windows mail i get "one or more messages in your
Outbox do not have a valid account specified. Would you like to use your
default account to send these messages?"

I hit yes & nothing happens... So now I hit send/receive and the error
message says your SMTP server has not responded in 60 seconds. Would you like
to wait another 60 seconds for the server to respond?
Account: mail.optonline.net
Server: mail.optonline.net

So i hit stop & I get this message:

Subject 'TEST', Account: 'mail.optonline.net', Server: 'mail.optonline.net',
Protocol: SMTP, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Error Number: 0x800CCC19

Someone please help me!?!

 

That type of problem is usually caused by interference from a non-
compatible antivirus program. Which antivirus are you running?
As a minimum, email scanning in the antivirus must be turned off,
although that may not be sufficient to eliminate all bad effects.
In a worst case scenario, your antivirus may need to be uninstalled.

Email scanning in any antivirus must be disabled, for reasons
explained here:
http://thundercloud.net/infoave/tutorials/email-scanning/index.htm

If no improvement after disabling email scanning, consider upgrading
to Windows Live Mail, because it is less prone to suffering bad effects
from overly intrusive antivirus programs:
http://download.live.com/wlmail

 

I'm going to try that. Thanks for your help. But why would my antivirus
suddenly interfere? I haven't changed anything...

 

Antivirus problems can develop over time, and are often triggered
by an automatic update to the program.

 

I am using windows live from vista and all the sudden have the same message.
When I select to send from default account so far it lets me and message is
sent. I have gotten the do you want to wait another 60 seconds again before
and have called about it and noone seems to be able to help. What I do is
close mail down and wait a few min and restart it. I haven't deleted it yet
but thats my next move since noone seems to know how to fix it. Calling
microsoft was no help in the least.

 

It isn't clear what you mean by "windows live". Windows Live is the group
name for a whole suite of programs, see
http://download.live.com

Please give us the exact name of your email program so we can help you better.

If your mail program is named Windows Mail, do this:
When you get the "do you want to wait" popup, click No or Cancel.
This should bring up an error message. Right-click on your error message,
copy, then paste it into a reply here.
We can't do much troubleshooting without the complete error message.