I am really afraid to say that the likelihood is that the Virgin.net email address either has been or is in the process of being deleted! If this address dates back to the old dial-up internet days, or the later ADSL connection, then when these services were terminated, users of Virgin.net email addresses would have been told that they needed to take up a broadband account with VM to continue using the address, otherwise they would be deleted after a period amount of time.
Now what actually happened in reality was that in some cases these addresses weren’t deleted when they should have been and they lingered on. But, not being associated with a live VM broadband account - which is now a condition of using any of the VM branded addition - these email addresses and mailboxes are always in danger of being swept up in a period clean up of these ‘orphaned’ accounts, and simply disabled and deleted.
There is a chance, albeit a slim one, that the account has only been disabled, in which case it might, and I stress might be possible that it can be temporarily reactivated for you, but this will be a strictly temporary arrangement, it will not last and eventually it will be deleted with no possibility of recovery.
If the deletion process has gone too far though, then, I’m afraid it has gone, along with all the email within it.
As this thread had already been seen by the forum staff, they should return to it and see what if anything could be done, but you do need to be prepared for the worse.
