Hotmail Bad connection

[Marcolou16]

Hi, for the past few days I have getting this error.

[mjs]

Have you tried logging-in to the account on-line (using the web) to see if the account requires you to reply to a prompt of some kind?

This type error is often caused by MS needing a code (verification) or update of some kind that includes acknowledgment by the user. Once this is done the error should then clear.

If you are able to login on the web and the issue persists then you might try re-authorizing PP? (Edit account, click on the OAuth2 button [across from the "Login name"] and follow the ensuing steps).

[Marcolou16]

Re-authorize PP through OAuth2 and received confirmation from MS that PP had access to my account but still get bad connection error.

[mjs]

Have you tried logging-in to the account on-line (using the web) to see if the account requires a reply to a prompt of some kind?

[Marcolou16]

No problem connection using the web (no prompt) like you suggested in your first reply went through OAuth2 with same negative result.

[mjs]

When you do the OAuth2 procedure do you get a successful result as far as authorizing PP? If not can you provide as screen-shot of what you get?

You might try rebooting your computer or exiting and restarting PP.

Do you have other accounts that are working?

It the error persists then I'm afraid we will need to wait for further ideas from Jeff at that point.

[Jeff]

Bad connection means that you were not able to connect to the server. The other methods that you've been able to successfully complete (ie. the oauth2 verification and logging in with your webbrowser) are both web-based and so are not representative of the same connection that POP Peeper will use with IMAP.

I did a few ping tests on imap.outlook.com and I did get a high number of non-returned packets (it may have been timing because even though I lost about 5 packets in my first 2 tests, several subsequent tests have all returned 100%), but I haven't noticed any problems accessing outlook/imap myself recently. So if you've not been able to access outlook at all, there's probably something on your end blocking it.

Do you have any other (non-Outlook) IMAP accounts and are they working OK?

Try rebooting your computer.

[Marcolou16]

I have gmail and yahoo also connecting through IMAP without any issues.
Mentioned earlier that MS granted access to PP after OAuth2 sign-in.
Did reboot...but still get bad connection for hotmail/outlook.

[Jeff]

What are the results if you open a command prompt (find it in the Windows start menu) and then type:
ping imap.outlook.com

this is not a perfect test as it doesn't test the port, but it's a starting point.

There are also other servers you can try instead of imap.outlook.com :
imap-mail.outlook.com
outlook.office365.com

[Marcolou16]

Ping results attached.
Tried both servers recommended but get same bad connection error.

[Jeff]

Ok, this has exposed the problem:

Pinging MDW-efz.ms-acdc.office.com [127.0.0.1] with 32 bytes of data:

The IP address that imap.outlook.com has resolved to is 127.0.0.1 -- that's your local machine's IP address, ie. it's not correct. This is going to be outside our scope to fix this, since it's something on your computer that has been modified, but hopefully I've given you a starting point because this may be something that you changed intentionally (ie. the hosts file mentioned below requires admin privileges to update, and this is usually done manually).

I would first look at your Windows hosts file:
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

The default hosts file is basically empty (it's not a blank document, but it only contains comments). If you have anything besides lines starting with # then it's been modified and somewhere in there is likely the source of the problem.

[Marcolou16]

Well done Jeff.
Being a novice to the VPN world ( 2 weeks) I did not associate the IP address issue with PP since my gmail and yahoo accounts were working.
I'have corrected the problem and no more issue with hotmail.
A big thanks for your help and regards to larksrool as well.

[Jeff]

Happy to hear it