On occasion, Microsoft Hosted Exchange or Microsoft Office 365 email users (or nearly any email users, for that matter) may have an input box pop up requesting that you enter your username or email address and your password.

At times this can persist and become most annoying. This creates even more difficulty if the wrong password is entered and may even result in you getting locked out of your account.

Here are a few things that can affect email, and contribute to frustrating experiences with email credential pop up boxes.

Good Service

Don’t be fooled into thinking that because you can bring up Google or other websites that your email should then work flawlessly. Email happens on different ports than websites. And email has far more synchronization (back and forth between the server and your location) than websites. This means email is susceptible to your upload speed, whereas website viewing is generally not.

Most Internet users are on what’s called asynchronous service. That’s a fancy phrase that just means the speed your computer can download things from the Internet is much faster than the speed your computer can upload things to the other end. And when I say “much faster” I mean a really lot faster. So this can affect email far more often than website surfing.

Wired Routers

When you are getting the password pop up with a wired router it might be caused by intermittent Internet connectivity issues. This is when an occasional or intermittent disruption occurs in your Internet connection. Disruptions in the range of even milliseconds can cause issues.

These are, unfortunately, fairly common in some rural areas. Such issues can also depend on the type of service you have.

If you have DSL service through your phone company, that is more prone to email issues the further away from the actual connection point you are.

Cable Internet subscribers can also have intermittent connectivity and/or intermittent slowdowns depending upon how many users in your area are using the service simultaneously.

They both may travel over wires for some distance to your connection. This seems to be the most likely culprit for such Internet issues.

Wireless Routers

Wireless routers are the least reliable service in comparison to wired routers. Not only are wireless routers far slower then most wired routers, they are less secure from a network security standpoint. They are far more susceptible to signal instability than wired connections. If you are on a wireless connection, you may need to readjust where the wireless router is physically located in order to ensure the best connection to devices needing to access it.

Reset may be Needed

Another could be that the router – whether wireless or wired or both, may simply need to be reset. To do this it should be disconnected from its power source for at least one minute. Then plug it back in again and turn it on to let it restart.

Over the years I have seen many instances where routers seem to get “stuck”. This appears to happen more in geographic areas where the routers are subjected to power fluctuations. The problem is most frequent when the router is not protected by a UPS – Uninterruptible Power Supply – system.

Regardless of what your setup is, all of your computer equipment should be on a UPS system to protect it. This protection will save you a lot of aggravation in the long run.