[Sephiroth]

I have three e-mail accounts with different ISPs which means I can test receiving and sending e-mails between any potentially problematic mail services.

I use the Virgin email the least because I don't like the NTLWorld handle! Mt BTInternet.com e-mail service (Yahoo really) has NEVER glitched. My MSN service very rarely glitches other than asking me for username/password quite frequently.

When I investigated this with Wireshark, I couldn't find any server related issue. I think it's AV or firewall stuff running on my system; prolly a McAfee thing - but I can't be bothered with spending the rest of my life sorting this Username/Password thing out. Nobody has solved it.

You, on the other hand, do appear to have your server down if you can't send mail - unless there's something else wrong with your system. I wouldn't expected the UN/PW prompt from the Virgin e-mail server if it was down; but if it was mis-behaving or one of the server support functions was not in a state of grace, then this could happen.

As I said, I just sent myself an e-mail from the Virgin account to the MSN account - no probs.