I have enquired to my service provider about the repeated send and receive requests I have to issue before the application completes successfully after first start-up. I can see no issue and Sky say their system is working as it should. The problem started say a month or so ago. Norton reports IP address disappearing from adaptor. Could this have anything to do with the circumstances?
What email client are you using? I use Thunderbird and I think I have seen a few occasions recently when it has not connected first time. But you might be using Windows Live Mail if your Windows 2007 is what I call Windows 7 and if so it is past its end of life period for support by Microsoft so a change is worth considering.
The other thing is whether your connection protocol is POP3 or IMAP -- not that I know what the detailed differences are -- but in the last few months I have changed to IMAP, the more modern protocol, and saw the occasional connection problems even with Thunderbird largely disappear.
A bit more detail from you would help especially if you are for example based in Brittany in Francve!