It is possible, with many ISPs, to use a Telnet program to do maintenance on your mailbox on the POP3 mail server. This allows you to look at, and possibly delete, any problem causing message (e.g. too large to download, improperly formatted message, etc.)

The instructions below are based on the Win95 TELNET.EXE program. See here for some other Telnet programs and operating systems.

From the Win95 task bar, select: Start, Run…, and enter the following:

telnet pop-server-name port#
(Note: if you start Telnet from the browser, rather than the Win95 Start Run command, the syntax is telnet://pop-server-name:port# – However, MSIE 3 has a bug and you must leave out the // on the address line and use telnet:pop-server-name:port#)

Check your mail settings for the pop-server-name and port#. Most POP3 servers use port 110.

For example:

– For CNZX Internet: telnet mail.cnzx.info 110
– For AT&T Worldnet: telnet postoffice.worldnet.att.net 110
– For Netcom: telnet popd.ix.netcom.com 110
– For SpryNet: telnet m#.sprynet.com 110
(# is 1 to 5 and varies by user)

This will connect to the mail server. If you fail to get a successful connection message, check the following:
You must include the correct port number, usually 110. The default Telnet port number won’t work.
The syntax varies by how you start the Telnet program. On the Start, Run, you separate the server name and the port number with a Space. In the browser, you separate the server name and the port number with a Colon.
If starting from the browser, the browser must be configured to know about your Telnet program. The Win95 version of MSIE normally does this automatically on install. For Netscape, and the Win3.1 version of MSIE you usually need to do this manually. See your browser documentation. However, it is not necessary to start the program from the browser. You can start it directly.
MSIE 3 may not start the Telnet program from its address line if you use the “//” in the URL. Just remove the “//”.
You will want to enable Local Echo so you can see what you type. In the Win95 Telnet program this is under Terminal, Preferences. Also, you may want to turn on logging to capture messages to a text file. In the Win95 Telnet program this is under Terminal, Start Logging

For the connection, and each command that you enter, the mail server will respond:
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