This response is not directly related to Courier, but I decided to put it here anyway, since it may help some people running a service based on Courier.

There are several issues with OE (and Outlook as well) and it seems more likely that it is related to OE than the OS.

Accounts defined in OE simply stop working without any obvious reason and without giving any proper error messages. Synchronise the account and the MSbox does not even send any packets to Courier. The only workaround for this problem, that I have seen several times at several different users, was to erase the account and define the same account again.

Outlook (in particular) usually run ning WinXP, sometimes managed to messup network connections and decided by its own that a new mailserver should be the default (and only) server to talk to. The definitions for the Courier has been replaced.

And, forbidden, do not let users have Dlink DI-604 NAT boxes between the client and the mailserver. I have got so many complaints about the Courier box not working properly. In fact what happend at several users multiple times, is that the Dlink NAT box improperly relay DNS entries so that IP addresses for the Courier box points somewhere else (a random address). Since a user will not be notified, the result is "Mailserver does not respond" and Courier is blaimed.

As a matter of fact my Courier boxes run unattended. The software seems to be very stable. Nothing has been needed from system management point of view since I started the two machines I am runnning since about 150 days ago.

/Lars