Is there any way to see or set the POP3 timeout setting, other than running the wizard?

Tools | Internet options...  allows you to change the General, POP3 and SMTP settings.

 Would I get this set of messages if the password for mail was changed?

Not normally, but I just tried to connect to the host IP you specified and it timed out on password.  Looks like it could be a bad username/password.

 Please note that I have four email addresses at comcast.net, and only

the dthomsen8@comcast.net address is failing in this way.  

and this makes it more likely that there us a password problem.

[*] Connection established to 76.96.62.119
>> 0016 +OK POP3 ready
<< 0016 USER dthomsen8
>> 0005 +OK
<< 0016 PASS XXXXXXXXX
8: Socket read timeout.

This is what I get after about 20 seconds every time I try to receive mail as user DAVID.  I can get mail as any of my three other identities just fine, and I can send mail from DAVID.  I have sixty (60) messages waiting for download from COMCAST.NET, which I know from the web access to the mail.  These messages have accumulated while I was traveling abroad, and is highly unusual for me.  Many of these messages have attachments, which I need. 

I have used the General tab to change the network timeout to 999, but that makes no difference in what happens.  What can I do now? 

> Connection established to 76.96.62.119
> >> 0016 +OK POP3 ready
> << 0016 USER dthomsen8
> >> 0005 +OK
> << 0016 PASS XXXXXXXXX
> 8: Socket read timeout.
>
> This is what I get after about 20 seconds every time I try to
> receive mail as user DAVID.  I can get mail as any of my three other
> identities just fine, and I can send mail from DAVID.  I have sixty
> (60) messages waiting for download from COMCAST.NET, which I know
> from the web access to the mail.  These messages have accumulated
> while I was traveling abroad, and is highly unusual for me.  Many of
> these messages have attachments, which I need.
>
> I have used the General tab to change the network timeout to 999,
> but that makes no difference in what happens.  What can I do now?

What is the timeout setting in the POP3 setup?  If it is not blank then it overrides the general tab timeout setting.  

FWIW, when I tried to ping 76.96.62.119 it times out, however I'm having troubles with the internet right now with some routes to host.

You may also be having problems with the the packet size.   POP3/SMTP transmissions may fail if the MTU packet size is so large that a packet is fragmented.  In many cases the receiving system router blocks the receiving servers "packets fragmented" response to the sending system using "MTU Discovery".  These oversize packets are not accepted and so are resent.  This results in a timeout, generally at the end of the message transmission but it can be anywhere in the process.  You need to reduce the MTU size. Windows defaults to a 1500 MTU and many routers and DSL connections need 1492.  You might simply want to turn off the MTU Discovery operation.

You might want to get a copy of SG TCP Optimizer that I find quite handy.  http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php  This little utility will allow you to test your MTU for maximum size without fragmentation against specific servers.  If will also make it easy to adjust the MTU.  

And finally, does this computer, by chance, happen to have an NVidia NForce 4 chipset on the motherboard?  If so, many other have had this exact problem, and it turned out to be an optimization setting for the built in NIC which caused the problems with packet fragmentation. Disabling the advanced optimization capability called "checksum offload" made all the problems of sending SMTP mail via WinPMail disappear.

Is there any way to see or set the POP3 timeout setting, other than running the wizard?

Would I get this set of messages if the password for mail was changed?

Please note that I have four email addresses at comcast.net, and only the dthomsen8@comcast.net address is failing in this way.   

Also, note that this email address was working fine in July.  I went to Malaysia for most of August, accessed the mail with the web mail facility at comcast.net, and now I have this problem.