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Exchange mail problems

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by techgirl75

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We host our own mail server. Exchange 5.5 on Nt 4.0 server. Recently, we have only been seeing intermittent mails that are being sent to us.. and some that we send out are not reaching our recipients. I checked the Internet Mail Service queue andit was empty. The mail is not being bounced back. We have no limitations on incoming and outgoing limits. Today I looked in the Message Transfer Agent and it looks like all the messages were queued up there. The MTA Service in Services was not started. I started the Service and the mail started leaving the queue. However all my users got were "Failed Delivery messages" (which didn't have their original messages attached so they would know what it was for. If the messages left the queue, why wouldn't they be sent to our mailboxes or sent out? There is currently no messages in any queue and I'm as confused as ever. In my SERVICES - MTA is selected as "manual"..which means it won't start up on reboot... I thought Internet Mail service handled all my incoming and outgoing mail. Can someone please explain.

6 replies

by techgirl75

Sorry, mail was actually backlogged and queued in MS Mail Connector which I found in the message transfer agent queue list.

by cnaes

Do you have all the latest Service Packs? One of the Service Packs (can't remember which) fixed a problem similar to this. I also recently saw an article on Microsofts site that you could check out as well (if you haven't already, that is). Any way check out Q234065 or possibly Q234702.
Hope this helps.
Cnaes

by lordinfidel

While the IMS does handle outbound and inbound mail from the net. It is only 1 piece of the puzzle.

When you have outlook open and you generate an e-mail to someone in your org. When you press send, that e-mail is sent to the MTA for delivery.
If it is within the org, then the MTA will deliver it to that persons mailbox.

Now if that piece of mail is destined for the net, it will pass that e-mail over to the IMS.

In the same token, if it is x.400, msmail etc, the MTA will pass it over to that connection.

So in short, the MTA must be running. Go into services and make sure it is set to automatic.

At this point, I would reboot the mail server, making sure that MTA is set to automatic. Exchnage may have become confused with the MTA stopped.

Get Managing Exch Server by Paul Robichaux, pub by O'reilly. This will give you an excellent overview of exchange.

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