Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.domain (More info?)
I am having a problem that is absolutely driving me crazy. I swear,
I don't know which to shoot. Myself, or the computers.
Here is the situation is a nutshell : I have a network with 4xp pro
machines on an NT domain in a NAT routed environment and only one of
them will send and recieve e-mail. The other machines simply time out
and get dropped by the smtp server when they attempt to retreieve
thier mail.
Now the story. I am a computer technician and I run my own computer
consulting firm which is aimed at providing support and consulting
services to the small office / home office user. A few months ago I
got a client that needed some support for something (I cannot recall
now what it was) and at the time was considering upgrading her client
machines to xp. She asked me about xp. some of its benefits etc and
what it would cost. I told her what I knew and what it would cost and
told her that she would need to order XP pro as she is on a domain and
would be unable to logon with Home Edition. Her office was an NT
domain and she had the only xp machine on it.....all the others were
98.
She called me about 3 weeks ago and had decided that she wanted to do
the upgrade. She works for a non profit advocacy group as the office
manager and gets funding from the government with a budget that has to
be spend in the fiscal year or it was lost. Naturally she wanted to
spend it all, so opted not only for xp but some copies of office 2003
and a new computer as well.
She ordered the computer from Dell and I got the copies of XP (3
total) and MS Office (2 total) from a local supplier. I then arranged
to perform the work on a saturday as it would be the least disruptive
to her work.
Installation of XP and Office went fine ( the computer she got from
Dell had XP pro installed by them ). I did forget to do a few pre
installation things like record the NetBIOS name of each computer and
save some settings like the mail setting *.iaf files. I made sure
that each machine was able to logon to the domain, and had network
access. I was able to browse the network, open files, access the
internet and seemingly retrieve e-mail. The only machine that I did
not have to touch was her first xp machine. I simply moved it to a
co-workers office next door and set up that users e-mail
The last point is the important one here, becuase a day later the
office manager called me to tell me that she could not send e-mail
with her account. I thought it strange as I was sure that I was able
to do so when I was there yesterday. I told her I would come over and
look into it.
The result of that has been 3 days of hell, with no end in sight.
I checked her machine and tried to send a test message to someone that
she claimed she could not send to. I typed up 3 or 4 sentances and
hit send. It just sat there..........the line indicating progress
did'nt move and then it timed out. Usually with this message :
Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible
causes for this include server problems, network problems, or a long
period of inactivity. Account. account name, Server: 'server name',
Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '+OK', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): N0,
Error Number: 0x800ccc0f
This e-mail did not contain any attachments or pictures. Just text.
She did not seem to have any other problems. I could go to any number
of web pages aned view network resources.......just no mail. After
checking and re-checking and re-re-checking the settings to ensure
that they were the same as the other computer in the office that was
able to send and recieve, I noticed that i could send e-mail, as long
as the message was VERY short. I made a test message with just the
word "test" in it and sent that. It went thru fine.......albeit
slowly, but it went nonetheless.
I searched the internet for answers and found technet article 813514.
It indicated that if Norton antivirus was installed and scanning
e-mail it could cause the system to time out while logging on the smtp
server. It suggested I disable the e-mail scan. I did just that and
also disabled script blocking to be on the safe side. Niether made
any difference. I disabled the program itself, no change. Further
reading on the matter revealed that some individuals were able to fix
the issue by creating a new xp account. I tried that too...nothing.
I also pinged the smtp and pop3 server by name and used the resulting
ip numbers in the account information instead of the name, thinking
that it might be a name resolution problem. That did not work
either. I checked the xp firewall..........it was not on.
The following day I brought in a computer of mine from home to
test......a win2k server machine and added it to the domain. I logged
into the system using the account of the office manager (the one with
the mail problem) but my computer exibited the same issue. I went to
the user next door whose e-mail did work and set up the office
managers e-mail account on that system, but logged in as the office
manager........same issue. I then logged in as the other user and set
up the office managers e-mail again. This time it worked !
I have so far FDISKed the office managers computer and did a full
reinstall of xp pro, not installed any antivirus or firewall, removed
and re-created her account in NT and I still cannot retrieve her
e-mail.
The network setup is fairly simple. They use business DSL from Bell
Sympatico in Ottawa Canada. The WAN line from the DSL modem goes to a
4 port router, an ethernet line goes from one of the ports to a
multiport switch and all the computers are connected to that,
including the server. A user on the network cannot access anything
without authenticting to the domain and since the office manager can
access network resources and the internet, I know that there is no
authentication problem. There is no name resolution problems either
that I can tell, as again the office manager can access any web page
and I can ping the smtp server and get the IP. As a side note, I
tried to TELNET into the SMTP server and I could not send a message
that way either. Also there can be no blocking of port 25 or port 110
as all the machines connect thru the one port on the router and it
would affect the machine that does get mail too. I checked all the
accounts in NT and could not find any polices or profile restrictions
that prevent accessing e-mail
The original XP machine is the only one on the network whose name has
not changed.
At this point I am thinking that there is some kind of issue on the
ISP's end that they have a cache of FQDN of computer that use a
particular account and since the names have changed or are new, they
are preventing access. However I feel this is a bit of a long shot
because as I mentioned earlier the office manager is able to send
e-mail, but only if the message is very shot.
The other thought I had was that the computer name was somehow not
being properly registered in the NT SAM and that that was causing some
issues.
These are both guesses at this point which is all I've got. I 've
given this problem my best effort and I have to say I'm stumped.
Are there any NT or networking gurus here that have some advice ?
I need it !
Regards,
Graham
I am having a problem that is absolutely driving me crazy. I swear,
I don't know which to shoot. Myself, or the computers.
Here is the situation is a nutshell : I have a network with 4xp pro
machines on an NT domain in a NAT routed environment and only one of
them will send and recieve e-mail. The other machines simply time out
and get dropped by the smtp server when they attempt to retreieve
thier mail.
Now the story. I am a computer technician and I run my own computer
consulting firm which is aimed at providing support and consulting
services to the small office / home office user. A few months ago I
got a client that needed some support for something (I cannot recall
now what it was) and at the time was considering upgrading her client
machines to xp. She asked me about xp. some of its benefits etc and
what it would cost. I told her what I knew and what it would cost and
told her that she would need to order XP pro as she is on a domain and
would be unable to logon with Home Edition. Her office was an NT
domain and she had the only xp machine on it.....all the others were
98.
She called me about 3 weeks ago and had decided that she wanted to do
the upgrade. She works for a non profit advocacy group as the office
manager and gets funding from the government with a budget that has to
be spend in the fiscal year or it was lost. Naturally she wanted to
spend it all, so opted not only for xp but some copies of office 2003
and a new computer as well.
She ordered the computer from Dell and I got the copies of XP (3
total) and MS Office (2 total) from a local supplier. I then arranged
to perform the work on a saturday as it would be the least disruptive
to her work.
Installation of XP and Office went fine ( the computer she got from
Dell had XP pro installed by them ). I did forget to do a few pre
installation things like record the NetBIOS name of each computer and
save some settings like the mail setting *.iaf files. I made sure
that each machine was able to logon to the domain, and had network
access. I was able to browse the network, open files, access the
internet and seemingly retrieve e-mail. The only machine that I did
not have to touch was her first xp machine. I simply moved it to a
co-workers office next door and set up that users e-mail
The last point is the important one here, becuase a day later the
office manager called me to tell me that she could not send e-mail
with her account. I thought it strange as I was sure that I was able
to do so when I was there yesterday. I told her I would come over and
look into it.
The result of that has been 3 days of hell, with no end in sight.
I checked her machine and tried to send a test message to someone that
she claimed she could not send to. I typed up 3 or 4 sentances and
hit send. It just sat there..........the line indicating progress
did'nt move and then it timed out. Usually with this message :
Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible
causes for this include server problems, network problems, or a long
period of inactivity. Account. account name, Server: 'server name',
Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '+OK', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): N0,
Error Number: 0x800ccc0f
This e-mail did not contain any attachments or pictures. Just text.
She did not seem to have any other problems. I could go to any number
of web pages aned view network resources.......just no mail. After
checking and re-checking and re-re-checking the settings to ensure
that they were the same as the other computer in the office that was
able to send and recieve, I noticed that i could send e-mail, as long
as the message was VERY short. I made a test message with just the
word "test" in it and sent that. It went thru fine.......albeit
slowly, but it went nonetheless.
I searched the internet for answers and found technet article 813514.
It indicated that if Norton antivirus was installed and scanning
e-mail it could cause the system to time out while logging on the smtp
server. It suggested I disable the e-mail scan. I did just that and
also disabled script blocking to be on the safe side. Niether made
any difference. I disabled the program itself, no change. Further
reading on the matter revealed that some individuals were able to fix
the issue by creating a new xp account. I tried that too...nothing.
I also pinged the smtp and pop3 server by name and used the resulting
ip numbers in the account information instead of the name, thinking
that it might be a name resolution problem. That did not work
either. I checked the xp firewall..........it was not on.
The following day I brought in a computer of mine from home to
test......a win2k server machine and added it to the domain. I logged
into the system using the account of the office manager (the one with
the mail problem) but my computer exibited the same issue. I went to
the user next door whose e-mail did work and set up the office
managers e-mail account on that system, but logged in as the office
manager........same issue. I then logged in as the other user and set
up the office managers e-mail again. This time it worked !
I have so far FDISKed the office managers computer and did a full
reinstall of xp pro, not installed any antivirus or firewall, removed
and re-created her account in NT and I still cannot retrieve her
e-mail.
The network setup is fairly simple. They use business DSL from Bell
Sympatico in Ottawa Canada. The WAN line from the DSL modem goes to a
4 port router, an ethernet line goes from one of the ports to a
multiport switch and all the computers are connected to that,
including the server. A user on the network cannot access anything
without authenticting to the domain and since the office manager can
access network resources and the internet, I know that there is no
authentication problem. There is no name resolution problems either
that I can tell, as again the office manager can access any web page
and I can ping the smtp server and get the IP. As a side note, I
tried to TELNET into the SMTP server and I could not send a message
that way either. Also there can be no blocking of port 25 or port 110
as all the machines connect thru the one port on the router and it
would affect the machine that does get mail too. I checked all the
accounts in NT and could not find any polices or profile restrictions
that prevent accessing e-mail
The original XP machine is the only one on the network whose name has
not changed.
At this point I am thinking that there is some kind of issue on the
ISP's end that they have a cache of FQDN of computer that use a
particular account and since the names have changed or are new, they
are preventing access. However I feel this is a bit of a long shot
because as I mentioned earlier the office manager is able to send
e-mail, but only if the message is very shot.
The other thought I had was that the computer name was somehow not
being properly registered in the NT SAM and that that was causing some
issues.
These are both guesses at this point which is all I've got. I 've
given this problem my best effort and I have to say I'm stumped.
Are there any NT or networking gurus here that have some advice ?
I need it !
Regards,
Graham
l8m9051qjl4772dskudu2gn83qgillpkv@4ax.com...
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