US State Department staffers wrestled for weeks in December 2010 over a serious technical problem that affected emails from then-Secretary Hillary Clinton's home email server, causing them to temporarily disable security features on the government's own systems, according to newly-released emails.

The emails were released under court order on Wednesday to the legal advocacy group Judicial Watch.

The emails show that State Department technical staff disabled software on their systems intended to block phishing emails that could deliver dangerous viruses.

They were trying urgently to resolve delivery problems with emails sent from Clinton's private server.

"This should trump all other activities," a senior technical official, Ken LaVolpe, told IT employees in a December 17, 2010, email. Another senior State Department official, Thomas W. Lawrence, wrote days later in an email that deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin personally was asking for an update about the repairs. Abedin and Clinton, who both used Clinton's private server, had complained that emails each sent to State Department employees were not being reliably received.

After technical staffers turned off some security features, Lawrence cautioned in an email, "We view this as a Band-Aid and fear it's not 100 per cent fully effective".

The Associated Press initially reported on Wednesday that the emails described security features being turned off on Clinton's own private server, but State Department spokesman John Kirby clarified hours later that the emails described "a series of troubleshooting measures to the department's system - not Secretary Clinton's system - to attempt to remedy the problem".

Clinton has repeatedly denied there is any evidence her private email server ever was breached.

Days after the technical crisis, on January 9, 2011, an IT worker was forced to shut down Clinton's server because he believed "someone was trying to hack us". Later that day, he wrote, "We were attacked again so I shut (the server) down for a few min". It was one of several occasions when email access to Clinton's BlackBerry smartphone was disrupted because her private server was down, according to the documents.

In a blistering audit released last month, the State Department's inspector general concluded that Clinton and her team ignored clear internal guidance that her email setup broke federal standards and could leave sensitive material vulnerable to hackers.

Her aides twice brushed aside concerns, in one case telling technical staff "the matter was not to be discussed further," the report said.

The FBI is investigating whether Clinton's use of the private email server imperiled government secrets. It has recently interviewed Clinton's top aides, including former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and Abedin.