Since my posting, I have found the problem and report it here in case anybody else should have a smiliar problem.

My new laptop came with a 30 day free trial of Norton Security, which I signed up for.  The 30 days expired a couple of days ago and, fortunately, I didn't pay to extend it because after it expired Pegasus suddenly started working as it should and as I was able to connect to my server ok.

Norton Security must have been blocking Pegasus from connecting to my ISP.  Some may argue that this is what Norton Security is supposed to do and, while I agree with that, surely it shouldn't block it without telling me it was doing so?  Also, the error message I was receiving within Pegasus was telling me that it was my ISP that was refusing my connection and, although I knew this wasn't true because I was able to connect to it on another computer, I couldn't fathom out why it was telling me that - now I know!

Regards, Flosex 

I have been using Pegasus successfully for very many years and currently have it installed on a Windows XP laptop, a Windows XP desktop and a Windows 8 laptop.  I have been using the Windows 8 laptop since January without any problems but yesterday I was unable to download or send emails and received the "15: Peer connect failure (the host has refused the connection)" message.  I hadn't made any changes to the computer and so this somewhat surprised me.  Every time I subsequently tried to download emails, I received the same message, and had to go back to my Windows XP laptop to download my emails.

I have tried re-starting the laptop, re-installing Pegasus, copying the whole Pegasus folder from my Windows XP laptop, running Pegasus as Administrator, but still cannot get it to download my emails, each time receiving the same error message as before.  The problem has to be with the Windows 8 laptop (as opposed to my ISP provider) because all other programs on it that require an Internet connection work fine, and the Windows XP laptop still works fine.

 I have obviously ensured that all the Internet settings on my Windows 8 laptop are identical to those on my Windows XP computer.

Any help and/or suggestions would be most welcome.

Many thanks

Flosex