Thanks to everyone whos sticking with this story - hopefully there’s a happy ending!

Now, just tried what you suggested, I’ve got OE6 outgoing on port 26 and maildirect on port 26, and the good news is that I no longer get the 10048 error message from avast on starting the pc, BUT the bad news, is that the outgoing em’s still aren’t being scanned :cry:

Here’s the relevant bit from one of the headers:

X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441
X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 0434-2, 20/08/2004), Inbound message
X-Antivirus-Status: Clean
X-Filter-Result: Score: -100%, Threshold: 50%

Whats next?