Seems like others have touched on this in various ways, but just to make sure...

If _any_ MW window is open (Options, Accounts, a comm error), the automatic email check is stopped. Period.

So, you open a window to check some setting, the phone or doorbell rings, and MW just stops working until you get back and realize the problem. It isn't hung. It hasn't crashed. It _knows_ it isn't checking mail any more since it continues to update the "Mail was last checked 57 minutes ago" display in the background. It's just devoting 100% of its processor cycles to waiting for your next mouse click. How very attentive.

This has been a problem for many, many versions. Could we _please_ get it fixed?

Thanks for leeting us know KWH, will check it out and what can be done about this.
Though most communication errors shouldn't be stopping Mailwasher (unless they are a bad password error) Mailwasher should still be checking every xx minutes.

I'm not sure I agree that this is a "problem", KWH. Here's why ...

As much as I love MW, I'm still reluctant to let any piece of software make a final, irreversible decsion on my behalf. So I "Mark for deletion" but I don't "Auto-delete".

I can't say for sure, but I suspect there might be a problem if I'm viewing a message and MW tries checking mail again. Is MW going to try to rewrite the file I'm viewing while I'm viewing it? Will it throw a "File in use - unable to rewrite" exception?

Personally, I like the fact that MW doesn't check again if another window is open. It gives me a very simple and reliable "Suspend checking mail" option. OK, so a toggle-button on the toolbar (Stop Timer | Restart Timer) would be even nicer.

Or, add two items on the existing "CheckMail" button:

I have no problem with some way to turn off the mail check. Not sure I would vote for adding all the stuff Eggman5x suggested. There already _is_ a checkbox for that purpose. Maybe moving the check/uncheck operation to a button menu (like Show 'hidden' mails), but leave setting the variable time where it is.

I do have a problem with the unintended nature of the way it currently works. I'm sure the developers did not intend the current operation, users don't expect it to "work" this way, it isn't documented to work this way (to the extent that anything is documented), and would be hard to justify in any documentation since it doesn't make a lot of sense. "If you want to stop the automatic mail check, simply open any other MW window. Or, even easier, just wait for one of our numerous annoying error windows to pop up all over your display."

I see this as a fairly significant bug that was reported and has been know about for many months and many versions. Hopefully the folks that monitor this forum will have more impact on getting things fixed than the old email reporting system.

I looked at my debug log with some help from the Mailwasher folks and found that my password was sent correctly but my ISP's server was responding too slowly and MailWasher thought it had encountered an error.

The log entries looked like this:

[ Read ] +OK InterMail POP3 server ready.¶
[ Wrote ] USER myuserid¶
[ Read ] +OK please send PASS command¶
[ Wrote ] PASS <password not logged>
[ Read ] ¶
[ Wrote ] QUIT¶
[ Read ] +OK myuserid is welcome here¶

PLEASE COUNT MY VOTE TOO!

Checking several mail accounts - I have one that seems to create the "Bad Password" error.

This then means that MW STOPS CHECKING ALL ACCOUNTS.

Where as this may not bother those with only one account - it sounds like I'm not the only one who thinks this could be handled in a slightly better way...i.e. the MS Way --> ignore the error and try again next time.

Any other votes for more graceful handling of this error?

Thanks.
LS