thanks to everybody who tried to help, my son informs me that when Pegasus mail updated, it lost the register settings to the virgin.net e-mail account, he does not know why the zen e-mail account carried on working ok, all is now sorted.

Hello from a new member.

 I opened mail today, and it told me I was being updated automatically.

 Fine, but I now seem to be unable to download new mail messages.

Its probably me......

Since Pegasus Mail does not update automatically I suspect that your anti-virus software was being updated and it's now blocking access to the server.  Turn off the anti-virus software and try again

What program told you, that you've been updated ?

pegasus mail told me it had detected I had been using an older version, and told me what had changed in version 4

I also have a Zen.co.uk e-mail account, that works fine, so could be a problem with my virgin.net e-mail account, I suppose.

That's interesting, I never knew that Pegasus has a auto-update function.

What version did you use before the update ( and what version is it now) ?

[quote user="bobthebrewer"]I also have a Zen.co.uk e-mail account, that works fine, so could be a problem with my virgin.net e-mail account, I suppose.[/quote]

ok, that's something you should check first ;-)

[quote user="bobthebrewer"]pegasus mail told me it had detected I had been using an older version, and told me what had changed in version 4[/quote]

This means that Pegasus Mail detected an older pmail.ini file or one that had been used with an older version. What has been done with you system that you are not telling us about?

I am technically challenged, my son does all the clever stuff for me, but he is away at present, so I am trying to sort it on my own. As I mentioned earlier, the ZEN e-mail account works fine, the problem must be with Virgin.net. Thanks to everybody who responded, will inform you of the final outcome in due course.