1. OF GENERAL INTEREST?:

AT&T Yahoo has a warning up in a sidebar that a recent McAfee AV update may interfere with connections to the internet. This doesn't seem to address the email problem, but might be of general interest. The failure to connect apparently isn't total, as Yahoo gives a web site that you should go to for fixing the problem: McAfee Repair The comment is that "you can still connect to https: sites" – but apparently not to http: pages. Note that McAfee says the fix doesn't work for Win98 or WinME. I didn't look to see if there's additional help for the ancient ones.

2. Some general email help at email tips:

According to this page, Yahoo email allows you to use a POP3 setting to receive email, and use an SMTP service for sending. Normally you would use POP3 only if you use an email client program like Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird. For "web mail" you may use the SMTP IMAP service for both, or may just use an html connection. The site isn't clear on what "non-POP" connections should be.

For "browser/web email," the proper protocol should be automatic if you connect to an appropriate server; but email should be transmitted in a secure mode so browser security settings could affect success.

If you are using an email client it may be necessary to enter different settings in the client program for receiving and for sending email, hence one might work and the other not work. If your settings have been changed to show a difference between the settings for send and receive, but the server to which you connect uses only SMTP (or only html), since the SMTP server you would send to is at a different address than the POP3 from which you would receive incoming. If you don't use a client program there probably will be no place to enter a difference so – probably – this isn't the problem.

[Note that Hotmail provides ONLY html service now, although they previously allowed POP3 and SMTP for some users.]

3. If I put "us.js2.yimg.com" into Google to see if they offer anything about what this address is, it takes me directly to a Yahoo image search page and gives no other information. (From Google or from my browser address bar, the address is aliased to a page that opens at http://images.search.yahoo.com/).

The "waiting for" message may not show the complete address where the hangup is occurring, and the address shown may be just the "homepage" for an image server. The login page may be requesting info from us.js2.yimg.com/bunch of/other/address_info or some such. This raises the possibility that the login page (on the login server) is f**d, probably in a jscript call, or that your computer's login info isn't providing a "correct" bit of information for it to retrieve (?). If it's the latter, I would expect a time-out and an error message, but there's no guarantee of that.

4. RealLife Web Designs gives a listing of server addresses for various email services (although I can note that the information for Hotmail is not current). It gives Yahoo server addresses as:

Yahoo incoming mail server: pop.mail.yahoo.com
Yahoo outgoing mail server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com

If you are not using a client program the addresses may be different; and since server addresses do change, these may not be current.

I've attempted to find Yahoo's own server list, but apparently one has to be able to register as a subscriber at Yahoo Help to find it, or they don't think you need to know.

I've also, apparently, confirmed that AT&T Yahoo, SBC Yahoo, and "plain vanilla" Yahoo give very different "Help" results, probably because both AT&T and SBC have proprietary "packaged problem solvers" that are part of your machine's program kit (and that differ from Yahoo's own) that make it "unnecessary for you to know how they do it."

Your Yahoo "subscriber package" may have included "fixer utiltities" but I can't help you to find any that might be there.

John