No, I didn't discover the problem, but perhaps clarified it a little.

It goes this way:

Open OE, DUN comes up, click 'connect', everything is fine, do some email,
ngs, etc.

Then, say, I want to go offline and stay in OE, perhaps to manipulate some
saved posts from local folder to local folder.
Click 'File', 'Work Offline', and dialog box comes up to ask if I want to
disconnect the modem.

*If* I disconnect, and subsequently do a 'Send/Receive', it naturally tells
me I'm offline, do I want to connect? so I click to connect.  DUN comes up,
connection is made, but OE sits there and can't find the server.

That is what I *recall* it said before, but, now that I have the dialup set
to
occur only if I'm not working offline, it says: 'Connection to the server
has failed, pop.gmail.com, POP3, port 995, SSL: yes, Socket Error 10060,
Error # 0x800ccc0e'.

And if I do nothing but close OE and open IE, everything is just fine.  If I
close OE and then reopen, everything is just fine--*just as long as I don't
shut down DUN*.

If I choose not to close down DUN back at the original choice to Work
Offline, then none of this happens.  When I go back online in this case,
everything is just fine.

Use ZA free firewall, AVG is set NOT to scan email, and I checked the KB for
the error but didn't find anything that seems to apply (don't have MSN).
The thing that strikes me is that the port #995, which I assume is the
result of
using the gmail POP3 setup app and is associated with the correct (incoming)
server under the account properties, sounds somewhat similar to the
description of the MSN problem in KB302339 and might point out the problem
to someone who properly understood all this (not me).

I should mention that this is hardly a big deal, since it is easy enough to
avoid, just a nuisance, but I've been a little concerned that it might be a
sign of a more serious problem.

Hope this is not too muddy.

Joe