Outlook e-mail error (0x800CCC1A) :

[MikeBernard]

Was working fine until yesterday but now getting the following error message when I try to send an email from Outlook using my virginmedia.com account 
Task 'Bernard - Sending' reported error (0x800CCC1A) : 'Your server does not support the connection encryption type you have specified. Try changing the encryption method. Contact your mail server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP) for additional assistance.'

[MalColmLuton]

I am having this Issue as well and it started today

Task 'xxxxxxx@ntlworld.com  - Sending' reported error (0x800CCC1A) : 'Your server does not support the connection encryption type you have specified. Try changing the encryption method. Contact your mail server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP) for additional assistance.'

[用心棒]

From a desktop or laptop device consider opening a Command Prompt window and running the following command:

curl -v smtps://smtp.virginmedia.com

 NB on other operating systems open a Terminal and run the above command.

Does the resulting curl output mention issue with checking certificate's revocation state?

-- 
I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media. Learn more
Have I helped? Select Mark as Helpful Answer or 🖒 Kudos to say thanks

[had_enough_now]

Why do VM support INVARIABLY suggest, issue is 'with 3rd party app' when its obvious everyone (or near everyone) posting ITT has the same problem, is using the same setup they have used previously for years without issue, and the issue is INVARIABLY with Virgin email servers themselves?

That email has issues occasionally, or lately very often, fair enough.  But please be more careful suggesting to customers the fault lies elsewhere, and they should run around changing random settings.  Because IME the issue is nearly always with Virgin, for whatever reason this time, telling to people to run around change things is not helpful and going to cause more problems than it fixes.  Its also btw currently NOT working again (0x800CCC1A error, as per OP - blueyonder email access via Outlook) and I am NOT running around changing passwords as a 'fix' for something that is patently a Virgin Email servers problem, nor should anyone else.  This is really poor advice and should not, in this case, have been offered IMO.

[al67]

C:\xxx>curl -v smtps://smtp.virginmedia.com
* Trying 84.116.6.19:465...
* Connected to smtp.virginmedia.com (84.116.6.19) port 465 (#0)
* schannel: disabled automatic use of client certificate
< 220 csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP server ready
> EHLO xxx
< 250-csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services hello [REMOVED], pleased to meet you
< 250-HELP
< 250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
< 250-SIZE 52000000
< 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
< 250-PIPELINING
< 250-8BITMIME
< 250 OK
> HELP
< 214-2.0.0 This is csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP service help
214-2.0.0 This is csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP service help
< 214-2.0.0 To contact postmaster send email to postmaster@virginmedia.com.
214-2.0.0 To contact postmaster send email to postmaster@virginmedia.com.
< 214-2.0.0 For local information send email to Postmaster at your site.
214-2.0.0 For local information send email to Postmaster at your site.
< 214 2.0.0 end of HELP info
214 2.0.0 end of HELP info
* Connection #0 to host smtp.virginmedia.com left intact

[knighthawk]

Hi,

I have had the same issue for the last 2 days. Been working for years and stopped suddenly.

I can send fine but cannot recieve via pop3 with the error.

Task 'mikexxxxxxxxx@blueyonder.co.uk - Receiving' reported error (0x800CCC1A) : 'Your server does not support the connection encryption type you have specified. Try changing the encryption method. Contact your mail server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP) for additional assistance.'

Thanks

Mike

[BaldyChris]

Exact same problem, emails in Outlook just stopped working in the last 2 days.

Have to agree, previous responses from Virgin seem to be misdirection.  Since we haven't changed settings, what benefit is there to checking them?  Have Virgin checked?  I mean it's not impossible Microsoft have changed something to wind up email recipients and providers alike... but I doubt it.

I'm sure some of the community responses are well intended, but they are clearly technobabble.

After a lot of frustration with trying to track down an answer on the main Virgin site, I found that it does not list example settings for a Blueyonder email address, making it impossible for me to actually check that my completely unaltered settings remain correct.

I tried instead to set up a new email account in Outlook, using the same email address and I think I may have stumbled upon the answer.  It seems that Virgin may not support POP3 and SMTP any longer, or at least have messed about with them in the last couple of days, and instead now favour IMAP.

Good news, setting up the "new" account did work.  Bad news, I now have 2 separate inboxes in Outlook which is not really the desired outcome.  Not least because it is now struggling to download EVERY email I have received since Tony Blair was prime minister, this killed Outlook at around the 50000 mark and it only reached 2018.

Even trying to sign up here to whinge/contribute was frustrating as I had to click on an email link to verify my new account... tricky considering what my initial difficulties were, and it also being lost in the approximately 160000 emails being delivered.  I went onto emails online to access it and found that Virgin had decided a Virgin email was in fact spam to add a further level of difficulty.

Perhaps the support pages could be updated to reflect what appears to be the issue here?  Or that Virgin responses in this thread could acknowledge that issues in fact stem from the Virgin end instead of suggesting Outlook users themselves have decided to mess around with settings for no particular reason?

As is clear above, I have been with the same provider for longer than they have been called Virgin, and in the main it is not wanting to lose an email address I've had for almost quarter of a century that has stopped me changing service provider.  But with tonight's experience, and several other concerns over the services offered and the ever increasing prices, I might just move to an email address that is not tied to an ISP and run the risk of losing access to every account I've ever created online and see if any other providers fancy taking my money instead.

[Jonny_007]

I have had this issue the past 3 days or so. I had virginmedia servers set up initially, that failed then I switched to blueyonders and that worked for a day and now nothing is working with outlook (office 16) from my PC.  It works fine from my android.  I'm a bit annoyed. It looks like something was changed on virgin servers then rolled out to blueyonder server a day later and that is failing.

[Jonny_007]

Me too - all of a sudden this week - NO EMAIL from my PC. I was using IMAP to virginmedia servers and then switched to blueyonders servers and that fixed it for 1 day. Now nothing. I deleted the setup and tried again now it won't create a new account

[Jonny_007]

Me too - started a few days ago - working fine for YEARS

[用心棒]

---

@al67 wrote:

C:\xxx>curl -v smtps://smtp.virginmedia.com
* Trying 84.116.6.19:465...
* Connected to smtp.virginmedia.com (84.116.6.19) port 465 (#0)
⋮
< 214-2.0.0 This is csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP service help
214-2.0.0 This is csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP service help
< 214-2.0.0 To contact postmaster send email to postmaster@virginmedia.com.
214-2.0.0 To contact postmaster send email to postmaster@virginmedia.com.
< 214-2.0.0 For local information send email to Postmaster at your site.
214-2.0.0 For local information send email to Postmaster at your site.
< 214 2.0.0 end of HELP info
214 2.0.0 end of HELP info
* Connection #0 to host smtp.virginmedia.com left intact

---

@al67, was hoping to see an issue with checking of revocation status of certificate but alas no. I am stumped for the moment but judging from similar posts its seems likely not all are due to the same cause though the resulting outcome appear to be.

Edit: The version of curl supplied with Windows does not show TLS handshake information. Consider downloading curl for Windows and repeating previous curl command; note once downloaded and zip file is extracted you will need to run curl.exe located under curl-8.7.1_7-win64-mingw\bin directory, for example.

X:\Users\用心棒\Downloads> curl-8.7.1_7-win64-mingw\bin\curl.exe -v smtps://smtp.virginmedia.com
* Host smtp.virginmedia.com:465 was resolved.
* IPv6: (none)
* IPv4: 84.116.6.19
*   Trying 84.116.6.19:465...
* Connected to smtp.virginmedia.com (84.116.6.19) port 465
* TLSv1.3 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1):
*  CAfile: C:\Users\用心棒\Downloads\curl-8.7.1_7-win64-mingw\bin\curl-ca-bundle.crt
*  CApath: none
* TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Server hello (2):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Certificate (11):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server key exchange (12):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server finished (14):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client key exchange (16):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS change cipher, Change cipher spec (1):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS change cipher, Change cipher spec (1):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
* SSL connection using TLSv1.2 / ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 / [blank] / UNDEF
* Server certificate:
*  subject: CN=email.virginmedia.com
*  start date: Jun  7 09:38:18 2023 GMT
*  expire date: Jul  8 09:38:17 2024 GMT
*  subjectAltName: host "smtp.virginmedia.com" matched cert's "smtp.virginmedia.com"
*  issuer: C=BE; O=GlobalSign nv-sa; CN=GlobalSign GCC R3 DV TLS CA 2020
*  SSL certificate verify ok.
*   Certificate level 0: Public key type ? (2048/112 Bits/secBits), signed using sha256WithRSAEncryption
*   Certificate level 1: Public key type ? (2048/112 Bits/secBits), signed using sha256WithRSAEncryption
*   Certificate level 2: Public key type ? (2048/112 Bits/secBits), signed using sha256WithRSAEncryption
< 220 csmtp1-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services csmtp1-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP server ready
> EHLO 用心棒
< 250-csmtp1-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services hello [redacted], pleased to meet you
< 250-HELP
< 250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
< 250-SIZE 52000000
< 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
< 250-PIPELINING
< 250-8BITMIME
< 250 OK
> HELP
< 214-2.0.0 This is csmtp1-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP service help
214-2.0.0 This is csmtp1-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP service help
< 214-2.0.0 To contact postmaster send email to postmaster@virginmedia.com.
214-2.0.0 To contact postmaster send email to postmaster@virginmedia.com.
< 214-2.0.0 For local information send email to Postmaster at your site.
214-2.0.0 For local information send email to Postmaster at your site.
< 214 2.0.0 end of HELP info
214 2.0.0 end of HELP info
* Connection #0 to host smtp.virginmedia.com left intact