Why do I gets Outlook is unable to connect to your SMTP server?

[Guest]

I had to reinstall XP. When I reloaded Office and tried to attach Outlook to
my ATT account, using the same information as before the rebuild, I can
receive emails but when Outlook attempts to sent I get an Outlook unable to
connect to SMTP server. I also have a gmail mailbox. Gmail allows POP3
connectivity. I set up an outlook account in accordance with Gmail's
excellent pictorial How To. Same thing. Out can't send to the Gmail server.
Makes no sense. Any help greatfully appreciated.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I had to reinstall XP. When I reloaded Office and tried to attach
Outlook to my ATT account, using the same information as before the
rebuild, I can receive emails but when Outlook attempts to sent I get
an Outlook unable to connect to SMTP server. I also have a gmail
mailbox. Gmail allows POP3 connectivity. I set up an outlook account
in accordance with Gmail's excellent pictorial How To. Same thing.
Out can't send to the Gmail server. Makes no sense. Any help
greatfully appreciated.

What is the exact text of any error messages? Are you properly
authenicating to the outgoing server (AT&T, at least, requires it)? Are you
running an antivirus program that is scanning outgoing mail?

 

[Guest]

I have PC-Cillin. I had it scanning incoming and outgoing. I turned off the
outgoing. No change. I'm getting:
! Task 'pop.gmail.com - Sending and Receiving' reported error (0x80042109):
Outlook is unable to connect to your outgoing (SMTP) e-mail server. If you
continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or
Internet service provider.

I can get to my email on the web sites for ATT and gmail. It comes into
outlook with no problem. I am just not able to send anything out of Outlook.

Send test e-mail message:

 

[Brian Tillman]

I can get to my email on the web sites for ATT and gmail. It comes
into outlook with no problem. I am just not able to send anything out
of Outlook.

You didn't answer my question about whether or not you're properly
authenticating to the outgoing server. You might also want to check these
articles:
http://www.google.com/search?q=0x80042109

 

[Guest]

As i understand it, I am. When I test the account settings, I get four
completeds and one failed. It establishes the network connection, finds the
outgoing mail server, finds the incoming mail server,, logs onto the incoming
mail server and then fails on the send test e-mail message.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the link, by the way. Unless MSN somehow hooks itself in during an
XP install, I'm not using it, but I'll hunt to see about that.

 

[Vanguard \(NPI\)]

As i understand it, I am. When I test the account settings, I get four
completeds and one failed. It establishes the network connection, finds
the
outgoing mail server, finds the incoming mail server,, logs onto the
incoming
mail server and then fails on the send test e-mail message.

The "test" provided in Outlook is not valid. You actually have to send an
outbound e-mail (to yourself) and then do another mail poll to receive it to
see if your setup and the mail server are working.

Try disabling your software firewall.
Try disabling ALL e-mail scanning (inbound and outbound). If still no joy,
try disabling the AV program altogether.
Try doing a traceroute to your SMTP server ("tracert <smtpname>").
Try pinging the SMTP server (some answer, some block pings; if it pings, you
know you can reach the *host* by that name, but that doesn't tell you if
their mail server *program* is running and responsive).

 

[Guest]

1. send email to myself. Sits in the outbox and never gets sent.
2. turned off firewall. shut down av. messages come in, they don't get sent.
tracert timed out consistently after 3 hops.
ping works like a trouper. No problem what so ever.

 

[Guest]

ran tracert again got there in 22 ms. looks like 17 hops. didn't time out.

 

[Vanguard \(NPI\)]

ran tracert again got there in 22 ms. looks like 17 hops. didn't time out.

Try upping the server timeout in the e-mail account's advanced settings.
Sometimes this help but usually it does nothing. This delay is only how
long the e-mail client will wait for the server to respond to a command that
the client sent to the server (and seems to be merely how long the client
waits after sending USER and PASS commands to get an authenticated session).
Notice it is in seconds and minutes. This is a LONG delay setting. Usually
when the e-mail client bitches about timeouts, it is in milliseconds, not
seconds.

Enable transport logging in Outlook. Exit Outlook. Delete any old logfile
that might still be around. For OL2002, its under %temp%opmlog.log. I
think OL2003 puts it in %temp%. If you have an HTTP account defined, there
may be an OPMlog folder, too.

If there is a lot of delay to the mail server, the e-mail client will
timeout. That is why one of the first suggestions is to disable e-mail
scanning by the anti-virus programs. The AV program delays delivery while
it interrogates the data stream. Another source of delay is lost packets.
Run the following:

ping -n 100 <hostname>

Use your mail server as <hostname> if it responds to pings. Otherwise, use
another host that responds to pings, like www.yahoo.com. The default of 4
pings is not a sufficiently sized sample to know how much loss you have and
why I show the program doing 100 pings. Then check how much loss you have.
These are packets that got lost and have to be retried. For every packet
that is lost and has to be resent, the retry time adds to the delay.

I start noticing effects in e-mail clients with as little as 4% packet loss,
data transfer gets significantly slower around 8%, and at 14% the e-mail
client might not even work and instead bitches about timeouts. A browser is
far more lenient than an e-mail client regarding delays: a brower will wait
5 minutes just to get 1 object, like a GIF image, out of many of them used
within a page whereas an e-mail client expects immediate response to the
commands it sends to the SMTP server.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all you input, Vanguard.
As it turns out, the solution was simple. The tech who reloaded XP on my PC
and reinstalled the Office products, didn't apply all the service packs
required. Principally, SP3 for Outlook. I applied SP3 and the problem
vanished.

Thanks to everyone for their help.

 

[Vanguard \(NPI\)]

Thanks for all you input, Vanguard.
As it turns out, the solution was simple. The tech who reloaded XP on my
PC
and reinstalled the Office products, didn't apply all the service packs
required. Principally, SP3 for Outlook. I applied SP3 and the problem
vanished.

Thanks to everyone for their help.

"I had to reinstall XP. When I reloaded Office ..."
"The tech who reloaded XP on my PC and reinstalled the Office products ..."

Oh, I see. It was someone else's fault (wink, wink).

I'm starting to wonder which software firewall you have running. Sounds
like the firewall was blocking connects from Outlook on port 25 (SMTP) but
allowing connects on port 110 (POP3). Did you ever try using a different
e-mail client using the same accounts?

Most firewalls that provide for application rules will refuse to permit a
program to connect unless you authorize that connection. For the first time
the firewall sees the program trying to connect, or when the program
changes, like for an update, which makes it a new an unknown program, it
should ask you again. However, Norton's firewall, for example, forgets to
prompt the user when a new version of a program is found and continues to
block its access. You have to delete the firewall's application rule for
that program and force it to create a new rule for the new program.

After applying SP-3, it is likely the Outlook looked like a new program.
Did you get a prompt from your firewall asking if you wanted it to connect
or not, and you said Yes? If so, that's why you can connect now because a
new rule was created for this new version of the program file (and the old
rule might still be in the app rule list).