Well, I am VERY happy to report that thanks to a wonderful blog I discovered, yet another idea was gleaned and tested and it worked – because this time, I didn’t wait until the next day – I used the restart function to test it, and hooray, it worked!

The How-To-Geek saved my time and tons more frustration with his post about windows compatibility. I went to my PopTray folder, and right-clicked on PopTray.exe and chose properties.  Then I chose to run the program in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode, and it worked!  His site contains TONS of great info to help you with several problems.  Excellent site!

Now I won’t have to reinstall PopTray every day like I had planned, because it retains the configuration settings I had so carefully entered for around 25 email accounts.  Now I can preview my emails without downloading anything nefarious and delete spam right off the server and create rules based on the spam to prevent future garbage with the same subject or body or email.

Viva PopTray (helps keep your computer secure) and my sincerest thanks to the how to geek (whose time is MUCH appreciated)!

Donna

PS:  There are two more posts about this that contain links you will need if you’re another frustrated Vista noob like me.  The first is: http://donnamaher.com/email-filter-that-works-with-vista/   and the second is: http://donnamaher.com/vista-is-really-ticking-me-off/