Hotmail Receipt Problem
- Hi all,
Since yesterday (26th) I have been having a problem receiving mail from hotmail, and certain other exchange servers.
The mail bounces back to the sender with the following retuned delivery report.
Reporting-MTA: dns;blu139-omc3-s7.blu139.hotmail.com
Received-From-MTA: dns;BLU123-W37
Arrival-Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:35:58 -0800
Final-Recipient: rfc822; <email address>
Action: failed
Status: 5.5.0
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;554 Transaction Failed (650058837:169:-2147467259)
I can confirm that my exchange server config has not changed over the weekend and was working on the Friday (23rd)
I can confirm that I can receive mail from other domains. eg: gmail.com
Please can you help
Simon Willett
Answers
- Hi All,
For me this problem is now fixed.
Before I close the problem, I wonder.....
could some one from MICROSOFT contact me to explain why the hotmail send mail facility broke over the weekend of the 24th and 25th?
Thanks
Simon Willett
All Replies
What have you got as your firewall? Are you doing deep packet inspection of ESMPT ?
- It is a CISCO PIX.
I get the same result with;
FIXUP PROTOCOL SMTP 25
and with;
NO FIXUP PROTOCOL SMTP 25
In the second case the PIX passes the packets through unaltered.
Just to confirm that this is a new problem since 26th Nov 2007
Simon - Is it an immediate NDR, or a delay notice then NDR? Also, have you got anything of interest in IIS's SMTP log, and have you got SMTP logging in exchange up to verbose?
I've been getting the same problem, and it seems like it's going on for a lot of companies.
You can view some more about it here: http://forums.msexchange.org/Cannot_receive_email_from_hotmail/m_1800457930/tm.htm
It seems to me like MS changed something with Hotmail/MSN over the Thanksgiving weekend that's causing these problems.
Any way to get their attention and get a response on this issue?
This page is all I can find:
http://postmaster.hotmail.com/Troubleshooting.aspx
Doesn't look like hotmail postmaster has a 'contact us' that i can find.
As you can tell, I'm new to this forum. I guess I was hoping that maybe Microsoft employees read and respond to these forums. Is that the case?
Another guy who's having this issue said it just all of a sudden went away for him, but only from SOME hotmail addresses. IE, he was trying to send from his own hotmail account to his corporate exchange server, and it continued failing, then all of a sudden today he was able to send from hotmail to his corporate exchange server. But even now other hotmail users cannot send to his company.
The whole thing is very difficult to pin down, and I would sure like to see Microsoft give us an answer on it.
I'm still having the problem...
It doesn't matter which hotmail account... using a browser or Outlook 2003.
I get the bounce back...? 554 Transaction Failed.
I'm only having a problem with one email server however?
All my other clients with Exchange servers using the same GFI SPAM product are not effected?
They are receiving my hotmail emails fine.
Just one domain.....Other MSN users are having a problem emailing to the same domain.
Last night I completely updated the GFI SPAM engine....no effect.
Hello HOTMAIL and MSN Admins... Talk to US!
How can the problem be on my end?I am also having a problem sending mail from my sympatico account (which is run by hotmail) to one particular domain - my office in Hong Kong - I can receive mail from them but since the weekend am unable to send to their address. I spent HOURS on the phone with tech support who was unable to help at all. I dont know where to turn to next.
I have not been able to get ahold of anyone yet. From everything I'm reading about this subjuct it sure seems like it's on Hotmail's fault. But I have not been able to find any kind of response from MS on this anywhere.
Very frustrating.
If by chance anyone from Microsoft is reading this, please, I mean this in a nice way: I love you guys! You are the ones that brought the Internet to the masses in the 90's. Without you, the world would be a very different place. But still, you need to make it easier to have outsiders reach you. According to my Service Prodicer (Datacenter), they have no contact info for your postmaster. It's not right, please change this.
I just wanted to throw in my two cents here. This same situation was happening to me as well. My data center said they couldn't the problem on their end and I believe them.
The main reason being that I have two domains on my dedicated server, and it's behind "my" firewall; www.WarpTV.com and www.zReturn.com. Emails to Sergio@ the former went through, but not to Sergio@ the latter.
The last time I successfully received an email from someone (to my zReturn domain) was 11/23, so the problem was very recent.
My data center said they have no actual contact info for MSN/Hotmail's postmaster. So yesterday I sent the same email to every variation of postmaster@ for microsoft I could think of. That includes emails to their abuse@ emails just in the hopes they would forward it.
Yesterday I even opened up a ticket under a hotmail email account cause that seems to be the only way to contact the postmaster. As of today, not even a generic reply.I've also done quite a bit of Googling and newsgroup posting and am finding A LOT of people are complaining about this. Given that, and it's all happened to us at the same time and I am confident the issue is on Microsoft's end.
This morning I tried and it still failed. Then I tried emailing someone other than "sergio". I sent it to "sales" and it worked. Then I sent it and "unknown" name and it worked.
Then I emailed it "sergio" and it worked, and still does!
I have zero idea what happened, what fixed it, etc.
But am a strict believer that you need to contribute all that you can just in case someone recognizes something somwhere down the line.
Best of luck
SergioI agree on contact from Microsoft. Unfortunately you probably won't find much unless you sit on hold with MSN support being escalated for 10 hours :-)
On the flip side, I too am running multiple exchange environments, but i'm not experiencing this problem at all. I've got exchange 07 and 03 recieving email without issues.
So, even though it may well be a hotmail issue, there has got to be some config that you all have in common that I do not have. Is there a common anti-spam/anti-virus or patch level?
Note I am not running Rollup 5 on Exchange 07.
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;554 Transaction Failed (650058837:169:-2147467259)
We're recieving this same problem. Just started today. If I find anything I'll let you know.
Sincerely,
David
Senior Network Specialist
D&K Enterprise LLC
Fort Lauderdale
Can you enable protocol log for SmtpSend and SmtpReceive on your internet facing servers using following and post it here
Get-SendConnector | Set-SendConnector -ProtocolLoggingLevel Verbose
(do same for receive connector)
The traffic is never hitting my firewall, unfortunately.
Another gentlemen posted that he's having this problem with one of his domains but not on another one of them. That's when both of his domains are hosted on the same physical server, in the same network infrastructure.
The only options I can see are some kind of DNS issue, or simply a Hotmail issue.
Dear All,
Any news for solving the hotmail sending issue?
We also had a post here (http://forums.msexchange.org/m_1800457930/mpage_1/tm.htm),
and found a lot of companies affected by hotmail recently, that we could only send to hotmail, when the hotmail reply to, it will fail...happend recently.
config at firewall no change, anti-virus no change
try to send an email to: it@tripower.com.sg from your hotmail, you could see the error, whereas, from your yahoo or any other account, you can send to me.
FYI
Waiting for solution?
DavidI am having the same prob here, the difference is that i have 5 domains and i can't receive from hotmail in one of them.
I have changed nothing neither on my firewall (sonic wall) or ES 2003
Maybe hotmail won't send at all to specific domains, cause messages are not hitting me!
If i find anything i will post it here.
Mr. Pecora
We are also having this problem the bounceback suggests the email is not reaching the Bell yard server, I have put on a PTR record and tried disabling the Antspam software all to no avail.
I could really do with some response from Microsoft to be able to tell my client something.
- Still having this problem, so I ran the Troubleshooting Assistant on MS Exchange 2003 and used my hotmail email address to test routing issues and there were none at all. My Exchange server gladly accepts email from hotmail and delivers it to my inbox.
However, If I send an email from hotmail to an invalid email address at my organization, I get a "mailbox unavailable" error in hotmail:Action: failed
Status: 5.5.0, Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable
When I send an email to a valid email address, I get the :Action: failed, Status: 5.5.0
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;554 Transaction Failed (650058837:169:-2147467259)
This would indicate that the messages are hitting my mailserver, but are being denied for some reason. I don't have any anti-spam solution other than the Microsoft intelligent message filter and the RBL's that we are using (spamcop, spamhaus etc.). I have also verified that I am not on any black lists. Incidently, my other domain that is configured for the same mailserver is accepting hotmail no problem. I have seen similar problems to this when Exchange servers talk directly to each other using ESMTP and using the XEXCH50 verb. I recall that although they reconise each other as Exchange servers they can't authenicate with each other and the tranaction fails.
I haven't tested this myself but it could be worth supressing XEXCH50 using the following KB.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/818222
I could be completely wrong, but it could be worth a test. Unfortunealty I don't have a system I can test with.
I received my second reply from Hotmail support today. The first one was a totally worthless form letter, today's reply is a slightly less worthless email, here is their reply, in its entirety. All they tell me is that my company is the one that's refusing to receive the emails.
I have no idea how that's possible. Yuck.
I'm going to reply, but I expect to keep getting nothing of any value from them.
Hello Robb,
Thank you for writing back to Windows Live Hotmail Technical Support. This is Myla and I am responding to your issue about receiving bounced messages when sending e-mail to XXX@XXXX.com account. I understand your need to resolve this issue immediately and I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
After carefully investigating your concern, I have determined that the particular domain is rejecting your e-mail message. To further address this concern, please try to contact the e-mail user of nrms.k12.nc.us using his or her alternate e-mail address and advice his or her to contact his e-mail support group to resolve this issue.
You are valuable at Windows Live, and we look forward to providing you with consistent and effective service. We appreciate your input and involvement in our Windows Live products.
Sincerely,
Myla A.
Windows Live Hotmail Technical Support
It's not limited to just Exchange. I host POP mail for a few hundred clients and Hotmail just doesn't work for us. We've only had a few complaints though I imagine that due to those other domains simply not having any Hotmail traffic.
We use Postini for mail filtering and there's nothing hitting Postini's servers, as far as I can tell. I've made Hotmail.com a trusted domain and it's still not getting through.
I tend to agree that this is an issue with Hotmail as our clients were able to receive from Hotmail as of Friday but not at all this week.
We have the same issue in lots of our customer sites and NOTHING has changed for any of them.
I see the same old MS robotic response on this.
Come on MS find out what you have done and let us know.
Matthew
- ITS WORKING!!!
ITS WORKING!!!!
I just sent a few tests to see how progress was...and ITS WORKING!!
Thank You Microsoft... I was thinking of leaving hotmail as my main email address. It Aint working It Aint working
still having the same issue
- Bummer..
I just sent another test and it was received...no bounce back...
perhaps the fix needs time to be replicated ? - Mine worked for a few hours on Monday and only for some Hotmail users only to stop again. It is still not working for us.
- having same issue. be nice if someone could tell us whats going on so the receptionist here doesnt have to forward calls to my desk about email.
A couple of people have reported that Hotmail randomly started working for them again, unfortunatley those same people have all reported that it breaks again a bit later.
This is incredibly frustrating.
This particular experience is almost enough to make me decide to abandon Microsoft. What kind of company can get away with being busted for a full weak without as much as acknowledging it?
Still wait for Microsoft to settle down, they send me a testing email as following;
the issue is the BAD hotmail sending problem.
From: Khalid Razzaq [mailto:kharazz@microsoft.com]
Sent: 2007/11/30 2:19
To: it@tripower.com.sg
Subject: test messageTest message
Khalid Razzaq | Software Design Engineer | Exchange Transport Platform Team
- Yep, this is for real and I have the solution. It took me a lot of looking to figure this one out. But when a lot of clients started complaining, I had to make this a top priority.
So here it is. Your domain's DNS probably doesn't have a SPF record. Once I added a SPF record to my domain's DNS, MSN/Hotmail started to send out the mail. I think MSN/Hotmail upped the security on their outbound servers.
Get your SPF record here:
http://old.openspf.org/wizard.html?mydomain=example.com
Learn about it here: http://www.openspf.org
I hope this helps. It worked for me and I haven't had any problems over the last 24 hours. Sorry to burst your bubble but our domain already had a correctly configures spf record
and it started to work again about 2 hours ago just like magic.. I'm guessing microsoft
fixed their problems or I went through another server pool
- We have several domains affected, some with SPF record some without so I have to agree. It looks like something else is to blame.
- Hi All,
For me this problem is now fixed.
Before I close the problem, I wonder.....
could some one from MICROSOFT contact me to explain why the hotmail send mail facility broke over the weekend of the 24th and 25th?
Thanks
Simon Willett The issue is now resolved for me as well. I too would love to know what happened, and why MS didn't step up and let all us administrators know their was a problem on their end.
Hundreds or thousands of man-hours were wasted because they would never admit they had a problem. Even their technical support kept trying to say it was our fault.
Classy.
I was having this problem as well, and i already had a SPF record in place for my companys domain.
The problem "magically" fixed it self today. I have been checking everyday since the problem was brought to my attention (monday 11-26-7).
It would have been nice to hear something from M-Soft telling us that there was a problem, and now it is fixed...but i guess that is asking too much.
- I had the same problem and explored PTR and SPF documents to no avail.
Finally, I realized that I had two domains pointing at the same IP Address in DNS and one of them was the e-mail domain that could not receive hotmail messages.
I looked at the other domain that pointed at the same IP address and found some old Alias C Records that had pop3.mydomain.com and smtp.mydomain.com in them. These had been there for years and had not caused any problems but they were not necessary anymore because we were not running a mail server off of that domain.
I deleted those two C Records and after 48 hours of propagating through DNS my problem is completely solved!
Since the problem was actually with the DNS settings for a domain other than the one having the issues I was stumped for quite awhile. Finally via an online tool which I think did reverse DNS I found that my mail domain when queried was returning the unrelated domain name! This led me to check the other domain and clean up its DNS records. I still don't understand why these errant settings suddenly caused a problem when they had not for literally 3-5 years!
I am just glad I stumbled upon the solution. danm190 wrote: ITS WORKING!!!
ITS WORKING!!!!
I just sent a few tests to see how progress was...and ITS WORKING!!
Thank You Microsoft... I was thinking of leaving hotmail as my main email address.Unfortunately still does not work.
Running Exchange 2003 Enterprise. No Hotmail or Sympatico mail can get through to us. We can send to any of those addresses, just they can not answer back.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Csaba Lendvay
Exchange Administrator
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