Re Thunderbird. To be precise with the problem I prepare my email message and hit send, it then brings up following massage:- "Sending of message failed, the message could not be sent because the connection to outgoing server (smtp) mail.howardclarkcoaching.co.uk timed out. try again" So that is what I do and it sends perfectly with no problem, successive messages after this also send with no problem, that is until I leave it for a while or shut Thunderbird down and re start it, then the initial send failure returns. It does this without fail every time. Though it is not preventing me form using it it is very annoying considering it was and has been OK for years! And there has been no alterations on my behalf. This message makes no sense as it cannot be timing out or else it would not be sending messages at all. It is the same on Linux and Windows. Emails are sent on an Arvixe server. This has not always done this only since newer versions of Thunderbird have been installed.