Outlook POP3 Timeout Annoyances
Originally published December 21, 2005
A number of folks have been running into Outlook 2003 POP3 problems, where either Outlook hangs or generates a timeout.
It is pretty obvious that there was an undocumented change in Exchange 2003 service pack 2 about the handling of POP3 messages. To read the relevant KB articles, the issues have been there for quite a while, but SP2 seems to exacerbate them...or it's all a coincidence. :-)
First of all, please ensure that you have Outlook 2003 service pack 2 installed. That fixes some of the recent issues.
Second, if you are using S/POP (POP3 with SSL), try KB 827349. Even though this KB only refers to Outlook 2002, it also applies to Outlook 2003.
Finally, try the registry change described in KB 816896. Note that this change has to be made on your Exchange server and requires, at a minimum, a POP3SVC restart.