Problems with Mail + Hotmail (HTTPmail)

My past experience with httpmail is just that it periodically does this. It'll work typically later the same day, and unexplainedly not work another time, on and off.... It's reliable in an overall sense, but I never would've considered it acceptable if I actually used my Hotmail account much.

Later, I switched to MacFreePOPs to do Yahoo and Hotmail using one app. It has the benefit of seemingly working on arbitrarily new hotmail accounts (httpmail doesn't seem to work on a lot of new hotmail accounts, but seems to continue to work on grandfathered ones like mine). I've found its method somewhat more reliable overall than httpmail, anyway. So I've just stuck with it.

But FWIW, the error you saw was one I saw fairly frequently for no particular reason with httpmail. If you click the lightning bolt next to the account and try to refresh again, it may well work. Or you might have to wait a few hours. Etc.

 

It's a little bit complex, but extremely powerful. It will let you import almost any web-based free mail system out there into a POP-based e-mail program such as Mail.app.

 

I have two hotmail accounts. One old and one new(er). The old one works nearly flawlessly with httpmail. The new one doesn't work at all. For the new account I use Thunderbird and WebMail (and the WebMail - Hotmail plugin). This combo seems to work but means I have two mail programs running.

 

Okay, let me see if I can help... it was slightly confusing at first.

You downloaded and installed the MacFreePOPs program. You ran it, and it started up the daemon, and then the thing popped up at the bottom telling you the POP server IP (127.0.0.1) and the port (2000), right? And at the top it said that the freepopsd was running, right?

Now, go to Mail's Mail Menu -> Preferences -> Accounts -> your hotmail account. I'll go through tab-by-tab with you.

1) Account Information:
Description - anything you want
E-mail address - full e-mail address of the form xx@hotmail.com
Full Name - whatever
Incoming Mail Server: 127.0.0.1 (with no "http's" or :// etc)
User name - same full e-mail address you entered above
Password - your Hotmail password
Outgoing server - whatever you normally use

2) Mailbox Behaviors -- don't need to change anything

3) Advanced
In the bottom half:
Port: 2000 (or whatever MacFreePOPs gave you)
Use SSL: NOT checked
Authentication: Password

Make sure all of these settings are set, and then try to go online with your Hotmail acct. Do you still get errors?

 

Yeah, I also followed all of these steps and have had no luck. For outgoing mail I set it up with smtp.gmail.com, and I do have my gmail account synced with Mail. In setting it up I get the error message: "There may be a problem with the mail server or network. Check the settings for account "Hotmail" or try again.The server error encountered was: The server "127.0.0.1" refused to allow a connection on port 110."...Though I did go to advanced settings and set the port to 2000, after this I would get the message: "The POP server “127.0.0.1” rejected the password for user “email@hotmail.com” Even after re-entering my hotmail password time and time again.

Help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

Are you running any network utils like LittleSnitch?

Hmmm, couple of suggestions.

Open the "terminal" application in the utilities folder, and type in:

ping 127.0.0.1

This should return something like this -- after a few lines of the "64 bytes," you have to hit Ctrl-C yourself (and then you get the last little bit):

PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.135 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.129 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.122 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.127 ms
^C
--- 127.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.122/0.128/0.135/0.005 ms

What you are looking for here is either that the lines saying 64 bytes do not appear, that the 64 is replaced by a zero, that the time in the lines is very large (>> 1 ms), or that at the end, it does not say that as many packets were received as sent, and that there was packet loss.

If that works, though -- that is, if your output is grossly similar to mine, then the next thing to try is to perhaps turn your firewall off for a moment, and then check Mail. If it works then, then you need to open port 2000 in the firewall. Although normally this should not be necessary.

 

Thanks for the reply...

Ok I tried what you suggested, and got the same results as yourself: 3 transmitted, 3 received, 0% dropped, all under the time 0.091 ms. My firewall was already turned off and the account did not want to work still. I also had no network utilities running. This time I got the error message "The server error encountered was: The server "127.0.0.1" refused to allow a connection on port 2000.", So now it is at least seeking out port 2000 as opposed to before. And then refusing the password again.

Any other ideas?
Again, thanks for the advice. I'm wondering if anyone encountered these same problems but got it to work in time? If not I may have to look at a forwarding program...

 

I never completely understood all of it, but I did have some problems at very first with FreePOPs. And some of them I understood and I understood why I was able to fix them, and others not.

The freepopsd keeps a log... I have to go home to check the log file's name for you, but it might help to find it and read through it. Mail just tells you *that* the request was rejected. Freepops may be able to tell you why, and also, if there're entries in the freepops log, then that means that Mail communicated with it and it rejected mail, as opposed to the operating system hatablocking Mail.app before it ever got to freepops. Make sense?

 

The server 127.0.0.1 refused to allow a connection on port 2000

For users of Leopard/Mail 3.0 who need hotmail/Yahoo etc POP access - httpmail is not yet updated for Leopard. the developer is working on an update, but it's not his main priority. In the meantime, Mac FreePOPs works really well.
But if you are getting the "The server 127.0.0.1 refused to allow a connection on port 2000" error, locate Mac FreePOPs in your applications folder, stop it, then click on update. Once it is finished updating itself, click run again.
Mail should work fine again, if not, try restarting Mail.
I was getting the above error consistently, the above process worked for me.
good luck.

 

Yeah, that is sort of the one problem with FreePOPs. Evolving issues with each client require the popular plugins (particularly Hotmail and Yahoo) to need to be updated almost weekly, whereas I am not wont to run the MFP program (which can be shut down after it starts FreePOPs) more than once every four weeks when I reboot my Mac.

Hopefully they will ultimately make it so that you can authorize FreePOPs to background identify and install its plugins.

 

update!!!!

hi guy, i think i've found a solution. I had the exact same problem as my application used to work and then suddenly told me that it would not connect to the port.... simple solution. you have to update the application! basically, do this:

go to the icon and go to "show MACfreepops window"
then STOP freepopsd service
click the box where it says: automatically notify for available on-line updates
it will immediately look for updates and then a box at the top will appear that says "updates available"
click it, let it update and FreePops will restart..

try opening MAIL and that's it, it should work perfectly... does for me!

 

problems with http mail

Hi.

I just updated to leopard and installed the new httpmail to get hotmail in my mail account.

I am able to receive mail ok, but not able to send mail from the hotmail server. When I try to use the server it says it is offline. But it appears that all my accounts are set online when I try to put them on.

What could be going wrong?

Thanks.

 

Yahoo goes to phone but not outlook

Has any one had a problem with the iPhone dowloading your email and then it not downloading in outlook? I have looked and there are no settings on the phone to leave a copy on the server like in outlook. This only happens with some mesages, some i get on the phone and outlook, some I dont. Any Ideas?