A different issue, but I was having fits tonight. As my e-mail was downloading a McAfee notice popped up to say it found a virus and deleted it. However, no more messages downloaded. If I tried to start downloading again, I got a message that the folder was being processed and I should wait.
Everytime I closed Netscape and started again it would work again, but the virus always came up first and I went through the whole process again. Meanwhile I kept getting messages that I had more and more mail (15, then 17, then 19 messages). I figured they were primarily spam, but there could always be something that mattered in there.
I finally got through to Earthlink and he said that even though it was deleted from my end, their server thought it was still there and so kept trying to send it. He was able to get into my mail and delete it. It still happened - turned out there was a 2nd one!! Once that was taken care of, all 17 messages came through, and sure enough - 1 WAS important!!
What a relief - I was really panicking!!