finally got this working.
It seems that any of the SMTP servers that I tried from the big, free email service providers (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail for example) wont work properly (at least I've not been albe to get them to work). This is regardless of the fact that I have valid email accounts on all of them. The only success I had was using my local ISP's SMTP server. Once configured with this, email notifications worked.
I'm not entirely sure if this is an encryption login issue or some other issue with ESET or if this is a SMTP relay blocking issue by the ISP. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has gotten these free email service providers to work on their system. I really cant think of any reason why ESET would not have the ability to use these eamail service providers as valid SMTP sources.
As a sidenote, it would be nice if ESET provided an easy way to test the email settings (ie, clicking on a button or box to send a test email) from the same setup screen where you put in SMTP settings. What a pain in the arse to not have it and to have to work around it. To get around this lack of functionality, I had put ESET in diagnostic verbosity for notifications while at the SMTP setting screen, then exit and go to the updates screen and click on update now for each email setting I tried.
So a tip for anyone trobuleshooting an email notification problem, if ESET is set to report diagnostic verboisty at the SMTP screen, everytime you click on update now, an email is sent. At least this way you can check various email settings quickly instead of doing something like forcing EICAR tests and waiting to see if emails show up.
Hope this helps someone troubleshooting email notification issues....and I hope ESET reads this...hopefully they can improve email notification functionality and testing...what a pain.
