Anonymous e-mail

A friend, running Windows XP, has a problem. When he sends an e-mail, it just says from Orange. It doesn't give his name or his e-mail address. Consequently it is not possible to reply using the reply icon.

Whilst I can see applications for anonymous e-mails, it is rather annoying. Any ideas.

He has a Dell machine and his free antivirus programme has just expired. This prevented his e-mail working at all (which is very naughty). With the aid of the help line I re-entered the e-mail settings (which were all the same) and disconnected the McAfee antivirus for him. This allowed the e-mail to work again, but this second problem has arisen.

 

So he hasn't got any antivirus protection at all?
Sounds like he could have been hijacked by a Trojan. I did this a couple of weeks ago - I use my laptop almost all the time and if I want to print anything, have to go upstairs to my desktop. Well I wanted to print a Google map and didn't realise that my AVG was out of date. Got loaded up with all sorts of malicious stuff in just that couple of minutes. Yet my Spybot kept coming up clean!

So I ended up buying a XoftSpySE which cleaned out nearly 150 pieces of malware and spyware and AVG found half a dozen viruses - in just two minutes!!

One of the Trojans was called Deskbar and kept trying to log me onto the internet on it's own. Xoft got rid of that too.

Moral - never go online without protection!

 

I concur totally - virus, and spyware protection, regularly updated is worth every penny. Many years ago I got bitten by a partition virus - does tend to focus the mind a tad, when you lose data. I would add that a firewall is another necessity - there's a lot of automated scanners searching for internet users.

You don't leave your front door open these days, a pc without a firewall is much the same.

Re- the e-mail problem, I would uninstall McFee if that caused a problem on expiry. Purchase another package (if its caused a gremlin installing a purchased McFee may not resolve the issue) - install and scan before doing any more internet stuff.

Me I use Norton and always have done - seperate adaware and spyware before Norton incorporated spyware, and ad filtering into its internet package.

 

Norton does it for me too.




Bless....

 

Roders - that picture is sick! - but very appropriate :D

On reflection I think that the problem might still be connected with the antivirus that has been disabled but not uninstalled. I have a free antivirus and a free firewall that I will put on his machine on Monday. A problem is that his machine is a Dell, which comes preloaded with large quantities of cr*p, and no copy of Windows XP. He is on dial-up and when not connected he keeps getting a message saying the machine cannot detect an internet connection. As its not my machine I hesitate to disconnect things, because I don't know how to set it up from scratch.

On my own machine I am still on Windows 98 (because I have a Windows 98 disk). I back my data up (not often enough!). When I have had a serious problem I reformat the disk and only install the stuff I want. I also have a second disk (which replaces the main disk) and this I use to roam freely over the internet and download at will. I have had lots of viruses and trojans on this, but I keep nothing of value on it and reformat at intervals. I visit very few sites on my main, serious, disk

Free anti-virus http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-virus-free/lng/us/tpl/v5
Free anti-spyware http://free.grisoft.com/doc/20/lng/us/tpl/v5
Free firewall http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/trial_zaFamily/trial_zaFamily.jsp?lid=home_freedownloads righthand column.

 

One other thing he could try with Xp and that is to use the restore function. You can restore to a date when the e-mail was working. Then uninstall McFee - and see if that works.

 

I tried to uninstall McAfee last year and had allsorts of problems, their technical department had me deleting parts of the registry, but I didn't have a clue what I was doing, in the end they sent me a file that was supposed to do the job.
As I recall that was due to McAfee causing problems with my e mail.

 

Thanks for all your help folks. The problem is solved - so simple I feel a bit embarrased to admit it. The solution was in Outlook Express/ Tools/ Accounts/ Properties/ General/ Name. The Orange help desk told me to put Orange in as the name, but it should have been the users name. It only clicked when I looked at the properties for an e-mail and saw the format of a name in quote marks followed by the e-mail address enclosed in chevrons, and saw that this friend had Orange followed by his own e-mail address.

 

Congratulations at finding the cause.

 

Thanks Fran. Like so much on the computer it is simple when you know how. Just a switch or a field to fill. But there are so many switches and fields!