Having reset my Tbird smtp settings to met the changes made by virginmedia, I am now able to receive emails (thanks, for the help. people!), but when I send emails, I at first get the usual " Connected to smtp.virginmedia.com ", but after a few seconds the connection breaks, and I get the message " Sending of the message failed. The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server (SMTP) smtp.virginmedia.com was lost in the middle of the transaction. Try again. " Any ideas gratefully accepted!