Outbound mail disrupted, reasons unclear.

[ChoiBoy]

Hello,
I wonder if somebody gives me a little help. Yesterday I spent a better part of the day trying to solve the problem with ALL of my e-mail boxes - to no avail. So what have we got?
- Pentium 4 system;
- Windows 98, DSL connection;
- Firewall: ZoneAlarm
- Anti-virus: Kaspersky, Ad-Aware
- Browsers: Opera, Firefox, IE
- E-mail box domains: mail.ru; pochta.ru; yahoo.com.
None of my e-mail boxes (irrespective of the browser I choose) will not send messages. 3 minutes pass, and then a warning appears on the screen: "Connection has been disrupted by the remote server http://win.mail.ru/cgi-bin/sendmsg (for instance)". Neither can I fill out and SEND questionnaires, forms when registering.
Yesterday, in the midst of the ado, I installed an update of ZoneAlarm (opting for "clean install" - with elimination of my previous customized settings).
What did I try?
- Using the above-mentioned browsers (Opera is my favourite, by the way);
- shutting down the firewall;
- scanning with the above-mentioned anti-virus and antispy software ("everything is alright, sir").

No. Everything (e.g., web browsing) seems to be OK, apart from sending out messages. I go on receiving e-mails, can read them and browse through my folders...

What would you propose for me to do?

Thanks for reading.

[glc]

Uninstall Zone Alarm and see if that fixes it. If it does, reinstall version 4.5.594 and don't update it.

[ChoiBoy]

Originally Posted by glc Uninstall Zone Alarm and see if that fixes it. If it does, reinstall version 4.5.594 and don't update it.

I tried this - to no avail. Could you suggest something else? I am at a loss.

ChoiBoy.

[glc]

To anybody that has any other ideas, note that this is WEBMAIL, not POP/SMTP.

[Spaz06]

If its webmail, the only thing that comes to mind is a java problem. If it happens on all browsers, thats a lttle weird and I can't really explain that one. You could go to www.sun.com and try installing java from within each browser. Other then that, I have no other suggestion.

[thefultonhow]

Download HijackThis and post a log to the System Security and Privacy forum. It seems like you might have some kind of malware.

[thefultonhow]

ChoiBoy, have you run HijackThis yet? Also, did you change any of the security settings in the browsers? It's possible that JavaScript is turned off.

[ChoiBoy]

Thanks to everyone who posted their suggestions in this thread/trouble of mine.
Acting on my buddy's advice the other day, I registered with another e-mail service (yandex.ru) and succeeded in sending a message from their mailbox. Getting back to my mail.ru box, I found that I still cannot reply to the message. That makes a complicated situation overcomplicated, doesn't it?
My buddy suggests that I should close all of my dysfunctional mail boxes and switch over to yandex.ru or else reinstall Windows (he proposes that I'd install Windows 2000). I like yahoo too much for that, and re-installation is too painful and arduous thing to do.
Acting on his advice, I used the latest version of RegClean. No use.
I will follow the suggestions in posts nos. 5 and 7, by all means.
Unfortunately, I couldn't do a free online scan at www.trendmicro.com. BTW, I decided to scrap my Kaspersky antivirus and install AVG instead.
I am using my office PC to post this message, for I cannot do the same with my home PC.
In all other respects my home PC works well enough. No malware has been detected by AVG and Ad-Aware.
Folks, I am still in deep water. Every time I browse Internet, I feel so unsecure, for I have no firewall.