system
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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 
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?