Overloaded e-mails can be aborted

Q: Recently I received some photos and then (gulp) I forwarded them to several people. You guessed it! My e-mail got stuck trying to send all that stuff. After many attempts to solve the problem on my own, I resorted to calling EarthLink. They didn't seem to know what to do. I waited a few hours. Somehow I no longer have the problem. I was able to delete the message from the outbox, and e-mail is working again. But what should I do if this ever happens again? How do I unsend or abort a sent message?

-- Wynn Petrakian, earthlink.net

A: I assume that you know what caused the kerfuffle, Mr. P. The computer needed to send the whole ball of wax to each and every addressee, and with large photo files doing such e-mail forwards will knock your computer backward and then some. So don't do that anymore. But if you do, consider the following:

Click on the message, hold down the Alt key and press F4, the keyboard shortcut for closing programs. If programs start closing keep hitting Alt + F4 until your machine is free of all running applications.

Should that fail, just hold down Control + Alt + Delete. In Windows XP, this brings up the Windows Task Manager, a module designed to show users how much performance capacity is being used, which applications are running and who is on the network one is using.

In the Applications tab click on the icon for Internet Explorer and then click on the End Process button at the bottom of the display. Do this with each instance of Internet Explorer (Outlook Express is part of IE) and your e-mail blitz will be forced to stop.

Keep in mind that the Task Manager is a last-ditch move and that it might make your machine shut down. This brings us to the ultimate fix: Hold down the power button on the front of the case for a few seconds to shut down. That'll stop the e-mail; I guarantee it.