[DA IMP]

Summed up by the topic title and description pretty much.
Several computers in the same LAN have this sort of bug (or virus infection who knows). I cannot tell for sure, when this began. I think a few computers always had it, but it's been chronic and widespread for the last 4 months or so.

On the Outlook Express mail accounts, the POP3 address keeps changing from the one I assign, to "localhost" at least once ever couple days (after I put it back in place). The login username changes too, adding a / and then the POP3 address (which is the same as the SMTP for the record).

This happens on XP, and it does regardless of substantial hardware and software differences between all PCs(SP1, SP2, patches up to date or not...).

The few computers with Microsoft Outlook proper from the Office package, are unaffected.

In my experience, Windows has a time-honored tendency to "forget" a few settings here and there, having them slip back to <whatever> time and again, so I chalked it up to this bug that by now seems inherent to this OS. But given the specifics of this situation, I'd really like to know how to get rid of it for good.

Thanks to all of you in advance!

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What I'm seeing from some other forums and this Microsoft article 813514 is that some AV software (specifically PC-Cillin) changes the the POP3 address to localhost during its email scan.

What Antivirus software are you running?

[piper]

What I'm seeing from some other forums and this Microsoft article 813514 is that some AV software (specifically PC-Cillin) changes the the POP3 address to localhost during its email scan.

What Antivirus software are you running?

[DA IMP]

I'm running Trend Micro Office Scan, aka PC-Cillin afaik.
After checking on their website and that article, I can see you're right, so thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Trend Micro is frankly inefficient in my experience, is apparently at odds with SP2 on XP, and I already have to re-install it on all computers because it cannot update itself without a unique registry key (since all installs are done from Ghost drive images, this is obviously not the case).

So, I'm seeing about saving myself the trouble of fixing it, and instead just opt for another antivirus (NOD32 is my first choice).

Even if I cannot use NOD32 'cos of the firewall and main Tech Dept. policies, now I know where to find the solution to Trend Micro's issue, so it'll at least not keep sabotaging the e-mail clients of the whole place every so often.

Once again, thanks for your help.

[piper]

Glad to help