Employees at the MSU Computer Center are still investigating the cause of Sunday's inaccessibility to a new Web-based e-mail system launched last month.

The site, located at mail.msu.edu, was inaccessible for most of Sunday. Service was restored around 1:30 a.m. Monday morning.

"It took longer than expected to get it back up," said Rich Wiggins, a senior information technologist in the MSU Computer Laboratory.

Although not confirmed, one cause may be the failure of the RAID subsystem, a sub-program within the e-mail system that detects redundancy problems.

Messages sent on Sunday could have been delayed, but that is the only problem users might have experienced as a result of the failure of the system.

Internal maintenance on the site was scheduled for 5-5:30 a.m. Monday morning. During the maintenance, the Web site was shut down.

Wiggins said during the shutdowns, minor operating systems were being added to the site. There is little traffic during those hours, he said.

The Web-based system replaces the Pilot e-mail system, which is accessible through the Internet or a telnet connection. Pilot will be phased out by the end of 2003.

While still in its testing phase, mail.msu.edu became available to users March 12.

Users were warned that because the site was still being tested, they might experience problems or lose e-mail completely until the final version was ready.

The system officially debuted March 25.

The system features more space for e-mail storage, a spell check tool and a "sanitizer" feature, which helps to prevent computer viruses that may be transferred via e-mail.

As of 9:15 p.m. Monday, 17,512 people had upgraded to the new system.

More than 200 people upgraded after the site was restored Monday morning.

"We're guessing that word's getting around there's a larger quota for e-mail, and that it runs faster," Wiggins said.

"It looks like before we get to the end of classes, we'll hit 20,000."

Fisheries and wildlife senior Monica Glysson has not yet switched to the new system.

"I graduate in two weeks and I don't need to have problems with my e-mail," she said.

Psychology senior Keri VanNorman also sidestepped the crash by having her e-mail forwarded to her Yahoo! account.

"I find it more convenient and it doesn't go down as often," she said of her Yahoo! e-mail account.

But Denise Barney was not so lucky.

The special education sophomore said she liked the old system better and has only used the new site a few times.

"I went to check my e-mail, and I couldn't," Barney said. "It was annoying."