Problems loading yahoo mail

I generally use a Windows 10 Pro VM as my main computer and have absolutely no problems with Yahoo mail functionallity. For whatever reason I wanted to check something in Yahoo Mail while working on the host and ran in to a major problem. YM took over 15 minutes to load, and when it finished loading it only populated about 27 lines of data, instead of the 50 or so lines that should be there.

I got curious, so I started checking Y. M.’s performance on every Windows instalation I had access to.

On 8 out of 8 physical instalations, Including 4 W11 installs and 4 W10 installs, Yahoo failed to load correctly. This included Chrome, Edge, Brave and Fire Fox Browsers. The systems range in age from several years to 1 month old. 3 systems are AMD, 5 are Intel. The Fire Fox and Brave Browsers were new installs, just for this test.

I then checked my Virtual Machines. On 7 out of 7 Virtual Machines, ALL instances of Yahoo Mail loaded correctly and within seconds. Of the 7, 4 are Windows 11, and 3 are Windows 10. I tested them on Chrome and Edge, all worked correctly. All of the VM’s are Hyper-V systems, 3 of which are hosted on an AMD Ryzen 9-5900 running W11, the other 4 on an Intel i5-8500, running W11.

ALL of the physical installations showed LOW %CPU usage, LOW % memory usage and LOW % disk usage according to task manager.

Of the Virtual Machines, 5 of 7 showed LOW CPU, Memory and Disk usage. The other two had 98 & 49 % CPU, 70 & 79 % Memory and 7 & 25 % Disk usage, but all loaded properly in seconds. Network usage was extremely low on ALL systems.

I even set up the Windows mail app on one of the physical installations to download just Yahoo Mail. That didn’t work either. It only shows 8 messages, 5 current messages, the others several weeks old.

All of the Yahoo accounts have the same user name and password. I first noticed the problem about a week ago, and had no change in the results. All Windows installs are 22H2 with current updates.

Why will it work on 7 of 7 Virtual Machines and none out of 8 physical setups?

I think it must be something related Virtual vs Physical drives. A related issue, I can't access Yahoo Help webpages on physical drives, but can on Virtual Drives.

Running an Ad blocker or what ever on your DNS perhaps? (I'm assuming the virtual machines are picking up a different DNS).

F22 Simpilot said:

Running an Ad blocker or what ever on your DNS perhaps? (I'm assuming the virtual machines are picking up a different DNS).

Not sure I understand. Are you refering to an ad blocker in the router? My chrome installation has Disconnect installed, which would be in all synced versions, including edge. But that would also include all of the VM's, which work. I installed Fire Fox and Vialdi with no sync, so I'm pretty sure they don't have ad blockers. Anyway, what ever is causing this is new, because I have used Yahoo for years on physical installations with no problems.

[edit] I installed Thunderbird on one of the physical machines with Yahoo as the only mail source, and that works flawlessly. However, I set up the mail function in Vivaldi with Yahoo as the only source, and that doesn't work at all. The Microsoft mail app only partly works.

Try clearing the DNS cache once.

Is your router connected to a modem? This may or may not be the culprit, but make sure your modem is in bridging mode if it's also connected to a router. If the modem is not in bridging mode while connected to a router you'll get a double NAT condition and funky network things can happen because of it.

You can test whether you have a double NAT or not by entering the following into CMD prompt: tracert 1.1.1.1 If the first two hops are withen your network range like 192.168.xxx.xxx, you have a double NAT. It might even be 10.xxx.xxx.xxx


Question: Are the VMs in bridging mode or do they get an IP address via DHCP?

Ever try monkeying with the Windows firewall? Turning it off then on, looking in the settings and whatnot? Try disabling any anti-virus? Sometimes an anti-virus can mess up a TCP/IP stack and in order to fix that a complete anti-virus uninstall is needed... the proper way. Some anti-virus software need an uninstaller provided by the anti-virus company.

I flushed the DNS on the oldest physical install and one of the VM's and reloaded Yahoo mail. No change in results.

Router is connected to a modem. All of the VM's are connected to the host via "default" switch, un-modified.

First three tracing addresses are:192.168.x.x 72.31.128.xxx 71.46.27.XXX.

I believe the default switch is not a bridge. It only provides access to the internet, the host, and other VM's attached. I believe the Host assigns IP addresses to the VM's.

All 15 systems use Windows defender and Windows firewall. Seems unlikely that they would be a problem since ALL the VM's work, and NONE of the physical systems work.

Garyw said:

I believe the default switch is not a bridge. It only provides access to the internet, the host, and other VM's attached. I believe the Host assigns IP addresses to the VM's.

Yeah, that sounds like DHCP. That is also the default setting in VMware. If you want a bridge (direct connection to the host) you have to set that option manually.

Garyw said:

All 15 systems use Windows defender and Windows firewall. Seems unlikely that they would be a problem since ALL the VM's work, and NONE of the physical systems work.

Not necessarily. If you have any issues in Windows Defender Firewall for one system it's not something that's replicated among other systems.

Maybe it's not a network thing but a HTML thing. See the possible solution here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...6-542b013077d7

Look for similar options in Vivaldi.

Not necessarily. If you have any issues in Windows Defender Firewall for one system it's not something that's replicated among other systems.

Exactly the point I was trying to make. I didn’t think I would have the same Defender or Fire Wall problem on 7 or 8 machines at the same time.

Maybe it's not a network thing but a HTML thing. See the possible solution here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...6-542b013077d7

You may be onto something. When trying to set up Yahoo for the first time, the several screens you go through are presented in text, not HTML on the physical machines. Otherwise everything is HTML. Your reference is refering to the Windows Mail app, not opening Yahoo Mail directly in a browser, but HTML is an issue either way. Even more odd though that it’s not a problem in the VM’s. Both the physicals and VM’s work off the same resources.

I did find the switches mentioned in the reference for Windows Mail. One of them was already set in my version of Windows Mail. I turned the other one on also, but didn’t matter.


Look for similar options in Vivaldi.

Vivaldi has it’s own built in mail app, which imports mail from other sources. It works correctly with Yahoo, as does Thunderbird. I just prefer to use a browser. If I try to open Yahoo mail directly in theVialdi Browser, the results are the same as Chrome, Edge, Fire Fox or Brave.

I did discover a work around. You can set up Gmail to display Yahoo mail along with your Gmail. I was unable to set it up on a physical machine, but was able to set it up from a VM. It now seems to work on both physical and Virtual Systems. It doesn’t solve the initial problem, but it is better than using a desktop mail app.

I appreciate all of your time and effort on this. Since I usually work in a VM anyway, the mail issue is not a serious problem, just more like a puzzle to be solved. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on this and I have other things I should be doing. I’m going to let this simmer for a while. Maybe it will resolve itself. Thanks again, Gary