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June 26, 2004 at 1:45 pm #2282182
EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Lockedby kherl · about 18 years, 1 month ago
Ok here is the story… I have had problems with our companies email address for over a week now. My ISP doesnt have a clue what is going on so i have began my search for answers on the web. We have not been able to recieve emails from certain addresses. The ISP claims that they are being delivered to us but they never get to us. We are using outlook express and have got emails from the addresses in the past with out a problem. This just sprang up out of nowhere. The computers are very basic, dont have any spyware, blocked senders list , virus protection, they are exactly how they were 2 weeks ago when we had no problems. My ISP is clueless on why the messages arent being downloaded from them. I have also tried to receive on 2 other machines with no success. Could anyone help?!?!?! What do i need to tell my ISP other than shove it and ill find someone else. THANKS FOR THE HELP!! please respond to kherl@swbell.net
THANKS!!!!Topic is locked -
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June 27, 2004 at 12:31 am #3366829
Interesting
by oz_media · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
I ran into a similar issue (am still sorta daling with it) over the past wekks on two different client sites.
They run their own mailservers so I have had the ISP’s run through a backup and that way they have record of all email passing through to the client.
Some very important companies have just been sending email into cyberspace and they disappear.
A revers Trace route shows it ending Bell South and a noted two unresolved hops past that. The sender is not having anything returned and it shows as transferred. Trace routes from their end show similar results.I have also had problems myself with overseas email coming in sporadically as well as mail from Eastern Canada.
Telus (the local telco) has replaced routers and DNS servers due to undisclosed problems, even with DNS changes, this should still be OK now as they reset every 20 minitues.
Mail seems to have been disappearing for quite a few people lately, I have had several service calls myself.
MY business ISP has had his engineers in the US working on it and they are at a loss because all mail they receive is transferred okay, but mail simply isn’t seeing them for some reason.
So with more than one company, more than one country, more than one ISp,more than one telco, I’d say something’s up that may surface soon.
???????
OM
Oh yes, this is a great place to discuss such issues, but the Technical Q&A section (link in left NAV bar )is the place to get such answers, although I’ve tried, though I solved it and some users are still missing some mail.
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July 16, 2004 at 7:44 pm #2717952
Known Telus & spam issues.
by jeffdammit · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to Interesting
We too, in Western Canada have experienced similar issues with email. We host a pop3 email server that we offer to customers in Western Canada. One fairly recent issue we have noticed, is that our ISP (Telus) has started blocking port 25 smtp outgoing traffic from computers in certain areas to try & curb mass mailing from infected computers. Problem is, they’ve done this without telling any of the affected customers, so we don’t find out until clients start reporting problems. They’ve also blocked all traffic in certain subnets, even to legitimate, non-infected systems. What we’ve done to get around this, is to have the clients change their email client settings to use the ISP’s (Telus) outgoing mail server, so that it will not be blocked. After we do that, business as usual.
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July 13, 2004 at 12:38 pm #2719961
TR Resources for e-mail problems help
by Mark W. Kaelin · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
You are not the only one having mysterious e-mail problems, bkline posted this Tech QA recently and we are still trying to figure out what is happening:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6251-0.html?forumID=50&threadID=154626And nebheprura is having trouble sending and receiving any e-mail with his installation of Outlook Express:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6239-0.html?forumID=50&threadID=154159I took some time to search Microsoft’s Knowledge Base for any articles that may help your situation, but this was all I could fine. You didn’t mention what version of Outlook Express you were using, but if it is not at least version 5.5, I would upgrade it:
OLEXP: IMAP and HTTP Messages Do Not Appear in Inbox
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;227928&Product=oexFor a comprehensive look at TechRepublic articles published regarding Microsoft Outlook Express you can get the free compilation download, which has been downloaded over 31,000 times:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5138-6249-729208.htmlSo kherl, tell us, are you still having trouble or have you solved it? Either way, we want to know.
I’m curious, is anyone else having problems with Outlook Express doing odd unexpected things?
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July 16, 2004 at 4:01 am #2718624
outlook mail delivery mysteries
by chriswatson · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to TR Resources for e-mail problems help
The problem would most likely be the corporate email server/receiver, check its blacklists and it’s redirects and possibly how it resolves email addresses.
It is not likely to be outlook.
Collect relevant information on the path to and from one end and the other, you can then eliminate one thing at a time,
Cheers
Chris
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July 16, 2004 at 1:41 am #2718635
Try this OE problems site
by ozi eagle · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Hi,
Try this site (no spaces) http://www.insideoe.tomsterdam.com/problems/ it sure helped me with issues I had.
Best of luck
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July 16, 2004 at 7:17 am #2718182
Assuming OE is the Problem?
by usaatca2001 · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to Try this OE problems site
Many replies are assuming that OE is the culprit here. That could be very misleading. OE is only the client. That is, it receives the mail sent by the server.
To rule out OE as causing the problem, try another email client, such as Mozilla Thunderbird. I wouldn’t recommend Eudora, as it installs spyware that doesn’t uninstall when you remove Eudora. Another client will either work or fail just as OE does. If it does work, then OE is the problem. If the new mail client fails also, then it’s something else.
If you can rule out the mail client, then work backwards to the failure point.
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July 16, 2004 at 2:28 am #2718631
Firewall Changes?
by happy · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Had a similiar problem where my wife couldn’t send powerpoint files to her corporate e-mail address, althought I could receive them on mine.
The e-mails just didn’t get delivered no Undelivered message or anything. This was due to the Firewall at my Wifes company, after a few arguments with her IT Dept. -
July 16, 2004 at 3:22 am #2718628
Same Here
by marketing · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
I feel your pain. First I became locked out of my e-mail via a password,which just seemed to appear, so I lost my address book and everything. I made two new accounts, one is working but the other isn’t. Both accounts are EXACTLY the same, just different addresses. Very frustrating! And I’ve read everything I could get my cheeto-stained hands on and nothing has worked.
Also, a few weeks ago people were getting copies of my e-mails without my knowledge. Apparently fired off via certain keywords, although there seemed to be very little consistency. This is likely some type of virus. I have also recieved copies of people’s e-mails without their knowledge. Very scary stuff. Be careful y’all!
Samantha
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July 16, 2004 at 6:57 am #2718530
Prevent virus-based Sending
by larry3500 · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to Same Here
We all receive email with viruses; most of us have an antivirus program that blocks most of it. But there is always the risk that some program ‘takes over’ your email client (Outlook, Outlook Express, etc.) and starts shooting out email to the rest of the world.
My solution is simple; in the configuration for your account, indicate that there is a separate address for outgoing mail. That separate address is the same as your incoming mail, but without storing the password.
This means you have to enter the password whenever you want to send an email message, but it stops anyone/anything else dead in its tracks.
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July 16, 2004 at 8:35 am #2718153
Virus Issues
by acsmith · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to Prevent virus-based Sending
The changes above will do little good preventing your computer from sending out worms if infected by a modern email worm. The newer worms have their own SMTP engine and don’t use the installed Outlook/Outlook Express client to propagate. The only way this can be stopped is if the mail server requires authentication.
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July 16, 2004 at 3:25 am #2718627
possible cause of email problems
by mcs1 · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
I have encounted this same problem. The good news was that each failed email that was sent, was also bounced back from a secure ISP filter. After contacting the remote, independent, ISP I was able to get them to unlock the filter that was blocking my email to one client. This solved the problem for me.
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July 16, 2004 at 5:01 am #2718603
Thinking somebody is fibbing
by chameleon186 · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to possible cause of email problems
Think the ISP has gotten crazy with filtering and possibly has broken the server. Few months back I used to maintain a MX servers and there is a fine line with filtering between having a working and broken server. Some of the advanced servers have many mechs for trapping spam. First thing is make sure your MX records and RDNS are correct if so I can only say the ISP is BSing somebody to cover their over stringent tactics. A certain Aohell ISP kept lieing about why messages where not being relayed when infact the location of my MX was on their blacklist not because it spammed but merly because it fell into a range. After 3 months of bickering finally got it resolved…..Good Luck email is a royal headache these days because of these spamming a-holes
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July 16, 2004 at 5:30 am #2718581
Possible problems with your POP connection
by daniel47 · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to possible cause of email problems
I have a friend who was having trouble with his Outlook, being able to receive, but not send. He didn’t get any bounce things just stayed in his Outbox. He worked long hours with tech support, and then by accident found the specific pop connections (in his case, those with a phone number ending in 0101) were not working correctly. He changed the pop he connected through and everything worked. Not sure which network those pops were connected with.
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July 16, 2004 at 5:09 am #2718597
Answer from Tech at an ISP
by tfordii · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
I good place to start would be find out if either your ISP or the other company/ISP that your sending to uses any SPAM blocks. I know from work experience that if your ISP or the sending party ends up on a program like SPAM Cop you may not be able to send to that address. My ISP blocks emails to known SPAMMERS, however we provide bounce messages.
Additionally if the other address is an AOL address they have their own rules about blocking.
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July 16, 2004 at 5:11 am #2718594
Sender Issue
by skingan · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
You do not specify if the problem is isolated to a specific company. We had a problem about a year ago where we would not get any emails from one of our customers. It did not matter who in that company sent the email, we did not get them. The problem turned out to be on thier side and not ours. They had an e-mail router that was not forwarding any email to our address.
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July 16, 2004 at 5:29 am #2718582
e-mail problems
by doug · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
I had the same problem until i configured a reverse look on my DNS server! Hope it helps.
Douglas Jones
SYS ADMIN -
July 16, 2004 at 5:30 am #2718579
e-mail problems
by doug · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
I had the same problem until i configured a reverse lookUP on my DNS server! Hope it helps.
Douglas Jones
SYS ADMIN -
July 16, 2004 at 5:44 am #2718573
Ditto!!!
by kdownslpn · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
I’m so relieved to find out that I’m not the only one with OE problems. My problems started when I noticed one day that I had read all my messages and still had the note in the bottom left part of my Inbox that noted that I had 3 UNREAD messages. None were hidden or ignored. Now, I have 8 UNREAD messages that I can’t get to!!! What can I do to get these messages out in the open so that I can read them?
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July 16, 2004 at 5:48 am #2718572
More info needed
by bitbucketboy · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Are the sender companies receiving any return message (undeliverable, etc)? Is their email to you actually leaving their queue? What is the SMTP “conversation” in their server log? Is it always the same companies? Do they have a common ISP?
Does your company have a firewall? Which type? Did you say your machines have no antivirus? Scary.
Have there been any changes to your network as of two weeks ago when the problem started? (However trivial they may seem).
Have you run a DNS report (www.dnsreport.com)? Check to see that your mail.yourcompany.com has an A (address) DNS entry, and that yourcompany.com has an MX entry.
-R
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July 16, 2004 at 5:51 am #2718568
rDNS is the point
by flx · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Hi kherl,
just have a look at http://www.swwork.it/approfondimenti/email_checking.htm
(you have to translate it as it’s in Italian).The problem is that some of the bigger player in US has started to apply the rDNS rule, this is an RFC rule but still not a standard.
And the problem fall here, lot of us, small player has to stay in the middle between customers and middle-little players or in-house servers.
rDNS states that while you cannot do reverse dns of MX or A record and (deeper) if you cannot verify the sender, the email has to be discarded.So you end up not receiving email from certain people.
While it is fast to fix the thing you will hit the wall while the other side is bigger than you and don’t want to listen.
To check it just find the IP of the MX and the reverse loockup it, if you don’t come back to the MX name you’re out of luck if you want receive email from there.
Best Regards.
Flaviano-
July 16, 2004 at 8:33 am #2718154
rDNS could indeed be it
by noorman · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to rDNS is the point
look here, it is mentioned here too:
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci917504,00.html
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July 16, 2004 at 8:49 am #2718148
rDNS pro and cons
by noorman · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to rDNS could indeed be it
RDNS attempts to resolve the source of incoming mail. If it fails it assumes the mail is spam. It is very effective as a technique, but so many companies have misconfigured DNS that it makes for a huge number of false positives. RDNS should only be used as a scoring mechanism.
SOURCE: http://www.scmagazine.com/products/index.cfm?fuseaction=GroupTestDetails&GroupId=6755
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July 16, 2004 at 6:12 am #2718564
Check rDNS
by ulatek · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Hi,
As several people have mentioned, definitely check DNS for a reverse lookup MX record. If you’re using your ISPs DNS server, you may need to call them and discuss it with them. Here’s a great site for troubleshooting DNS issues –
Also, there are a few good alternatives to Outlook Express such as Mozilla’s Thunderbird. You can always install something else to rule out a problem with OE itself, but if you’re having the same problem on multiple machines, it’s most likely a reverse lookup issue.
Chuck
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July 16, 2004 at 6:14 am #2718562
Had the same problem.
by mkiessling · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Turned out that the sending organization had changed their smtp server. The new server’s name was “essex”. Guess what…our email server filtered out any messages with “sex” in the header. Have them send a message to another server (e.g. Hotmail) and then look at the header information.
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July 16, 2004 at 6:18 am #2718558
Check to see if senders ISP is being blocked
by terryh · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Email from a sender can be blocked if their ISP has been blacklisted. Possible.
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July 16, 2004 at 8:06 pm #2717948
Check to see if domain or IP is being blocked
by jeffdammit · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to Check to see if senders ISP is being blocked
It could also be that the specific domain or IP address has been blacklisted. One problem we had was when a laptop user got infected with 2 mass emailing trojans over the weekend. His default gateway is our proxy, which is the same as our email server. We come in Monday morning to find out that we have been blacklisted on 2 anti-spam sites & 2 customer’s email servers are denying access. Make sure that legitimate email from your email server sends through port 25 & all other outbound smtp traffic is being blocked.
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July 16, 2004 at 6:37 am #2718546
Email Probs-HELP
by jimmiec · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Hello, I notice you have “bell” in your addy. Just very recently my ISP bellsouth.net has changed security of in and out emailing and sent the following email:
Dear Valued Customer,
We are pleased to inform you that BellSouth will be upgrading its e-mail service this month to reduce junk e-mail or ?spam? on the Internet. This message applies to you if you use an e-mail client program to read and send your e-mails. Some examples of e-mail client programs are Outlook and Outlook Express. If you only use http://webmail.bellsouth.net, http:// home.bellsouth.net or another ISP?s Webmail program to access your e-mail, you may disregard this notification, because it only applies to e-mail client software.
Most BellSouth Internet Service Customers already have their e-mail client program set up for this enhancement to work properly, but we ask that you check your e-mail client program settings to ensure that you are able to enjoy these additional benefits as soon as possible.
This spam fighting upgrade to the BellSouth e-mail service requires you to make a small change to your e-mail client by July 13, 2004. This change must be made to each account that uses your e-mail client program. These accounts include any account you have that ends in @bellsouth.net as well as accounts from other ISPs, such as yahoo.com, msn.com, etc. The change is:
Add additional validation to your existing e-mail account.
Your e-mail service will also now require additional validation to promptly send your messages from the BellSouth network. We ask you to check the box in your e-mail properties that specifies ?My server requires authentication? and enter your e-mail account password in the appropriate field.
For detailed instructions on how to do this, go to: http://help.bellsouth.net/blscontent/commoncontent/faq/smtp_desc.asp click on your e-mail client program and follow the steps to verify that your email client software is set-up properly.
This change applies to all customers who send their e-mail with an e-mail client through the BellSouth e-mail servers at mail.bellsouth.net.
If you do not ensure this change by July 13, 2004, after that date, you will be asked to enter the account password each time you send an e-mail. These changes will be required in order to send e-mail with our enhanced protection.
If you have any questions on this upgrade, please visit us at
http://help.bellsouth.net/blscontent/commoncontent/faq/smtp_desc.asp or contact us at 1-888-321-2375. Thank you for choosing BellSouth as your Internet Service Provider!
Hope this clears up your problem.
JimmieC-
July 16, 2004 at 3:40 pm #2717999
Spam Assassin
by ratatat62b · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to Email Probs-HELP
It’s good to know that Bell is going to be pro-active and try to limit some of the spam originating from their networks.
My ISP offers Spam Assassin as a free service that can be configured with both White & Black Lists.
I think it’s great and I’ve blacklisted some major spam sources with it.
*@swbell.net
*@rr.com
*@earthlink.net
*@northnet.com.au
and the list goes on to major ISP’s in Brazil, Denmark & France.On the other hand I’ve had to Whitelist everyone in my address book that uses the Sympatico ISP to prevent Mozilla from relegating their mail to my Junk folder.
Spam filtering is a double edged sword.
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July 16, 2004 at 6:48 am #2718540
A few things to clarify and try
by david.frank · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Are you experiencing this over multiple accounts with your ISP or are you all downloading email sent to a single corp email address? Maybe someone’s Outlook Express config is set to delete messages from the server after downloading. Also, if your ISP has a webmail interface, you may try logging into that to see if the messages have made it to your Inbox on the ISP’s mail server.
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July 16, 2004 at 6:55 am #2718533
Never discount the human element
by Mark W. Kaelin · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
There are some excellent suggestions in this discussion thread so far, but it turns out the answer is rather mundane.
I was curious about this e-mail problem, so I sent Kherl an e-mail to see if he had found the problem and fixed it. Here was his response:
[b]We had 2 computers running a pop3 account with outlook express, one NT4 machine and one with XP. The computer with XP that I don’t have access to had another user account that normally isn’t used until someone logged on to it without my bosses knowledge. He did not log the account off and just switched users to the one he normally uses. The idle account was pulling off all of the messages so once I got into the office and saw that there was another account logged on the problem was solved! I wish my ISP and I would have thought to look at this the first day!!![/b]
Perhaps Occam’s Razor applies: [i]”Of two equivalent theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred.”[/i]
The problems caused by the human element in information technology are probably the most difficult to diagnose. And I’d be willing to bet that most of us have good stories to tell about the [u]human element[/u]!
[b]What is your favorite human breaks technology story and how did you figure it out and solve it?[/b]
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July 16, 2004 at 8:59 am #2718145
Helpless Desk
by acsmith · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to Never discount the human element
Ah! The ISP’s help desk was really the helpless desk. The ISP should have been able to find this if the had looked at their mail servers logs. I had a like issue a couple of months ago which I diagnosed via the logs. In this case the two client machines where 5000 miles apart.
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July 19, 2004 at 5:55 am #2719670
Why????
by mwrose · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to Never discount the human element
Why if Kherl solved the problem did he not report this back in the discussion — surely this would inform others and prevent them from trying to come-up with new suggestions when the solution is already known.
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July 16, 2004 at 6:59 am #2718529
Troubleshooting
by bill · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
The first thing I would do, is to set up an account with Yahoo or Hotmail and ask the sender to forward/resend one of the emails that didn’t make it to this new address.
If it doesn’t arrive there, it’s most likely a problem at the senders end.
If it does arrive at Yahoo or Hotmail, ask your ISP to set you up a simple POP3 account on one of their servers, with an address like kherl@ispname.com and ask that company to again forward/resend that message there.
Access that account directly… as in through their ‘web access’ feature if they have one and see if it arrives.
If it doesn’t, there’s somthing in the setup for your company at the ISP, or in the senders outbound routers/firewall setups that has to do with your ISP.
If it does arrive, then configure your OE to access that account on the ISP and see if it will download it.
If it downloads to your OE… the problem then is in how your internal email server is dealing with the mail.
This problem, like a lot of email problems, will take some ‘slicing and dicing’ to isolate the portion of the email ‘process’ that’s falling apart.
Also… If you, your ISP, or the company that’s sending mail has popped up on the ORDB database, and someone in the path is subscribed to the ORDB service… the mail will be blocked as well.
To resolve Open Relay issues, you’ll need to tighten up your email server to ‘relay’ only for your internal IP range and resubmit your email server IP address for testing.
I hope some part of this post helps you resolve your problems.
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July 16, 2004 at 7:34 am #2718175
Does your company use a black list – options
by skipperusn · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
We had a problem with our filter software and its black list – one of our suppliers got put on a SPAMMERS list because their organization didn’t have security active on their mail server.
This put them on the black list – as a possible spam repeater site… so it rejected all mail messages without notice.
We had to put them on an acception list – to by-pass the black list…
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July 16, 2004 at 7:39 am #2718174
Check MX records of ISP
by jbuckner · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Same thing happened here. We run Exchange in house through ISP#1. We have websites hosted by ISP#2. Suddenly, we could not receive any e-mail from anyone that had service through ISP#2. We could send to everybody in the world but could only receive mail from users that did not have to go through ISP#2. We discovered that because we “used to” run our mail through ISP#2, they had MX records that periodically were defaulting to the old MX that pointed to our old mail. Call and check the MX records of all ISP’s that touch or “used to” touch your mail.
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July 16, 2004 at 8:03 am #2718166
Correct the filtering for spam on account
by humanspirit9 · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Go to the additional email addresses provided for your account on the web by your IP and change the filtering or add addresses you want. Mail is being filtered for pop3 downloading by the IP “on the road” account for obtaining EMail.
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July 16, 2004 at 9:01 am #2718144
DNS issue
by mnowak · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Based on what you stated I’d say it is a DNS issue. Someone else stated not so because DNS updates automatically. However, some ISP use BIND with DNS and the need to do a DNS Flush and reboot their DNS server. I know we had that problem when we switched ISP once and DNS was the problem until we had specific ISP flush and reboot.
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July 16, 2004 at 9:09 am #2718136
EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
by ahgjr · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
I understand that your ISP says that you are getting the messages, but do they have a SPAM and Anti-Virus program running in the background? If so you’ll probably have to set up a “White List” of those whom you designate as not being SPAM or Virus ridden.
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July 16, 2004 at 9:19 am #2718134
Isolate problem to see where it starts
by rkg · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
When I see something like this, I try to isolate it.
Set up the Exchange client on a different computer, preferably with a different (older) version of the client software (outlook 98?)Send the same message from a different service (hotmail and yahoo accounts are handy for this testing)
Send a different message from the same account (some spam filter acting up, maybe?)
Send with notifications (delivery, read, etc.).
Then, I try to read the header in the notofication to see what route it took, and what servers it saw.After this, you should have a better idea of the real culprit.
Off the top of my head, I would also try to remember any windows or outlook updates you may have done recently, and try to find ways to evaluate them (have an old clean machine with outlook that has not received any windows updates since 2002?)
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July 16, 2004 at 9:22 am #2718129
Blocked
by johnm · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
We ran into a situation that our domain was blocked by spam blocking sites.Alot of companies use these databases (spamcop.com, ordb.com, etc) to prevent spam from entering into there systems.
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July 17, 2004 at 5:39 am #2717912
Seen this before – here are some checks
by deadly ernest · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
OK, a few years back I had a string of similar problems with some clients I was working with and I was able to resolve them after a few checks. Had three different problems giving the same appearant problem. Final resolution of answer two took the client’s software experts two months to confirm the info I gave them about their server software. Have not checked all the other replies as I am currently on a shared 21.6 kbps service.
First use a different mail client to log into your ISP mail server direct and see how that works, this will resolve the ISP fault concerns.
Second if you have a distributed mail server system check the software versions and settings are the same. had a client with major troubles that turned out to be half the mail servers were version 4 and half version 5 and they worked slightly differently causing some messing up of headers at hand off between the servers, thus casuing e-mails to get sent to the bit bucket.
Third have the people who are sending the e-mail to check the actual text in the addresses being used. had a case where the address got corrupted on the sender’s PC and it was now trying to send to a non-existent domain at .co instead of .com
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July 17, 2004 at 9:10 am #2717896
SBC/SWBELL email
by gsporter · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Have you tried going in with the web email and checking your bulk (i.e spam) mail folder?
SBC/SWBell just changed their email system and
there is a chance the bulk mail filter got turned on.Thanks for your attention to this matter
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July 18, 2004 at 11:30 pm #2719723
E- Mail Problem
by pakkami · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
1. check via internet explorer that ur mail is working or not.
2. if u r using win98 or winxp check for any routine that is disturbing internet explorer u can check it by using .”MSCONFIG” command in “RUN” mode. check or any additional file that is running unnecessarily on ur machine and uncheck the command.
3. after restart again check for MSCONFIG command
I think this will solve ur problem.
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July 19, 2004 at 10:16 am #2719544
EMAIL Problems
by glen.adnam · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Is there any kind of error indication that the sender of the e-mail would get. You may have to contact them over the phone to be sure.
I have had problems in the past where mailservers get added to a spam list and are prevented from sending mail to mailservers that are configured to use block lists.
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July 20, 2004 at 3:46 pm #2700250
IT isn’t simple anymore.
by jrusso · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
Sometimes email messages get blocked because of the return address (such as when a reverse DNS fails). I’ve seen a lot of these that are transient – the rDNS can fail just because of packet loss caused by network congestion. In those cases, the same message will go thru if re-sent a few minutes later.
Many messages are lost because the ip address of the source machine or of one of the relaying smtp servers is on some black list. Many servers are refusing anything passed to them directly from any dynamic address. One university actually blocks everything from adsl connections, even static-ip connections. ISP’s with lots of smtp servers are continuously fighting a battle with RBLs who blacklist a server every time one of the isp’s customers gets a virus. Until some customer notices ant tells the isp that a certain server is blacklisted by a certain RBL, nothing gets fixed.
The amount of SPAM traffic has pushed many postmasters to back off on sending NDR’s. It used to be that when you couldn’t deliver a message, you sent a Non-Delivery Report back to the sender. Today so much email has fake addresses (spam and viruses) that trying to send an NDR often just results in more undeliverable messages clogging up your queue. At my agency, when an employee leaves the company, I’ll send NDR’s for a month ot two, and then just divert the messages to the bit bucket. Otherwise my server would thrash forever trying to send NDRs to fake addresses.
So if you’re not getting any error messages back to explain the loss, you have to experiment until you can prove what’s happening. Then maybe you can shame someone into admitting what they’re doing. Get yourself an alternate address on another service (hotmail or yahoo will work). Have those who can’t reach your company email send a message to your alternate. Look in the headers to see the originating and relaying ip addresses, and look them up on some RBLs to see if one of them is blacklisted.
If the problem gets serious, move your domain’s email to a different isp. Some isp’s periodically go through months of brain death. Sometimes it’s caused by a recent or upcoming merger. IT isn’t simple anymore.
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July 20, 2004 at 3:53 pm #2700248
problem was solved in an all too simple way
by kherl · about 18 years, 1 month ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
refer to the post
Never discount the human element
MKaelin | 07/16/04the explination was there
Thanks for everyones imput! -
October 25, 2005 at 6:22 pm #3046125
Missing Emails
by deanyeo_43 · about 16 years, 10 months ago
In reply to EMAIL PROBLEMS HELP!!!
I have this problem in Singapore too. In the last 4 weeks, I have been getting feedbacks and complains from users for the missing emails from external. Previously it was fine. So this would be the fault of my company ISP? I have reflect this problem to microsoft but they also can’t find anything wrong with that. Please advice.
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