(Note that VPOP3 v6.11 and later, the service startup system has changed so it should not suffer from this problem)

When VPOP3DB starts up, the service control manager component waits a set time for a response from the database server before it knows the service has started. If the PC is going slow (eg after a Windows update or if the PC is just slow) then this wait may not be long enough.

You can increase the timeout by following the steps below:

1. Run Regedit
2. Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VPOP3DB in the key tree at the left side of the window
3. Find the 'ImagePath' value on the right side of the window.
4. Edit the ImagePath value. If the end of the setting contains something like '-t 300', increase the 300 value (this is the time to wait in seconds, so maybe increase it to 1800 for 30 minutes). If the end of the setting does not contain a '-t' setting, then add one.

For instance, if VPOP3 is installed in C:\VPOP3, then the ImagePath setting may be changed to

c:/vpop3/pgsql/bin/pg_ctl.exe runservice -N "VPOP3DB" -D "c:/vpop3/pgsql/data" -w -t 1800