I think I may have found the problem - and its my fault - not quite sure how to fix it yet .

I have spampal running and i tried at first to get avast to run with it using the help/config options and i may have hurt my ini file ( i changed the default pop server to 9110 ) - but as i couldnt get my mail to send or recieve i used the config setup in spampal to cahne its listening ports as the config is easier and they have a rather good explaination on how to get spampal working with avast
http://www.spampal.org/usermanual/antivirus/avast/avast.htm

  • i had assumed that logging etc. was disabled in home version so have just been using firewall and spampal logs to try to find error - but im thinking now that its what i did to the inin file maybe thats causing a problem ?

Can i get another one or do i have to just reinstall ? - reinstall wont hurt as the outoconfig for mozilla didnt pick up any of my accounts anyway but i thinks thats due to the new structure of prefs.js that has been implementeed in 1.6