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scotmehl

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Exchange SBS 2003: Inbound email is not delivered to recipients

I have a 2003 SBS Exchange server that has been working fine until yesterday.  Users are able to send email and receive email from internal users.  However when someone from outside the company tries to send an email to the Exchange server it does not get delivered to the mailbox.  

There is only one domain set up and I am well under the 16 GB limit.  I've restarted the Exchange services, IIS services and the system itself and am still hving the same problem.

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Sembee
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Are you having email delivered by SMTP or the POP3 connector?

Go to dnsreport.com and enter your domain name. This will run a series of tests which includes connecting to your mail server. If there is an error then it will be flagged.

Simon.
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scotmehl

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I've checked the dnsreport.com and it does show that I am an open relay so I will look into that.  However I'm still not sure why email is not getting delivered to my users mailboxes.
Where is the email going? Have you found that?
If not, enable Message Tracking and see what Exchange is doing with the messages.

I presume that senders aren't getting NDR messages?

Simon.

No NDRs are being received.  What I also noticed is that email from some mail servers (ie; hotmail and yahoo).  However a few emails are being delivered.  Here's a copy of the tracking log:
SMTP Store Driver: Message Delivered Locally to Store xxx@xxx.com

For the emails sent from yahoo and hotmail I can't find any log messages.
Manually test the SMTP delivery.  It's tricky to type, but you can do it.  It's like this, from internal PC..  


telnet (servername) 25

helo ImTestingHaha.com
mail from: SomeAddr@MadeUpAddr.com
rcpt to: user@yourdomain.com
data
blah, blah, blah
(now press enter, Period, enter)
quit


Your session is done -- and some crappy "blah, blah, blah" email should be injected into the mailbox of "user@YourDomain.com" (assume that's you, eh?)


--

That's step one.  If that works, you look OUTSIDE of your Exchange environment to figure out your non-delivery problems.  

Step two is looking at MX records.  

Step three is telling us what the external users receive in their NDR.

(ie, host not found, etc..)

--S.
I was able to telnet into the server and send a message.  However the messages are getting stuck in the Queue and not being delivered to the mailboxes.  The reason I say this is that I am able to run the Message Tracking feature and find the emails.  I then track the individual message and the event reads "SMTP Store Driver Submitted Message to MTA".
Anything in the event logs for the same time these messages were sent in?

I presume this is happening for all users on this machine, not just one account?

Simon.
Found the problem/solution late last night.  The following Microsoft KB article shows some of the problem and states that reinstalling is the only solution.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=822939
The reinstall fixed the receiving problem and a DNS record change fixed the outbound problem.
Just going through some of the old outstanding questions as it is quiet...

Has this problem been resolved?
If you need clarification on any part of the responses above, please post back.

Otherwise you need to close the question by awarding points, or posting in the Support Topic Area (top right corner) with a link to this question asking for the moderators to close the question for you without awarding points.

Simon.
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DarthMod
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