Why are Outgoing Emails Timing Out When Scanned?

[kbarteski]

I am using Thunderbird 3.1.4 and my ISP is Sask Tel, a telecommunications company in Saskatchewan, Canada. 

When I send email messages with attachments ~50K or higher I receive this message 

"Sending of message failed. The message could not be sent because the connection to SMTP server smtp.sasktel.net timed out. 

Try again or contact your network administrator."

I have talked to Sask Tel technical support and they are telling me that the "time out" occurs because 

of the delay caused by the scanning of my email by my firewall McAfee Total Protection software. 

They have suggested that I disable email scanning. 

This defeats the purpose of having firewall protection. I am using Windows XP. 

What are my other options?

Ken Barteski 

Message was edited by: Ex_Brit on 13/10/10 12:19:13 EDT PM

[exbrit]

I edited your post to eliminate the scrolling needed to view it all & moved this to SecurityCenter..

This  is the first time I've ever heard of that.  It's more likely a problem  between McAfee and Thunderbird which would be best answered  by McAfee's Technical Support Online Chat.  See Useful Links above.

It isn't the firewall anyway but the antivirus application that is scanning your emails.

You  can turn off Email Scanning in settings as it really is an extra level  of protection that many regard as unnecessary as any malicious  attachments would hopefully be eliminated anyway if clicked upon or saved to your hard drive.

What version of Total Protection do you have, 2009 (square taskbar icon) or 2010 (shield)?

Message was edited by: Ex_Brit on 13/10/10 12:30:18 EDT PM

[exbrit]

I also came across this link so the problem is seemingly with Thunderbird:

http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/why_does_tb_3_6_time_out_when_trying_to_send_lar...

[kbarteski]

I have the 2010 version (Shield).

[exbrit]

As I am about to get on a flight for Europe I suggest you contact Technical Support Chat via Useful Links above.  As I said I think it's a Thunderbird issue.