Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated - currently pulling my hair out on this one... I would REALLY like to keep what I still have. Setup: Exchange 2003 SP2 on Win2003. 3 sites, all configured the same. Internet mail runs thru one server, named servername.mycompany.local. Internet MX record is servername.domain.com. Situation: Some external emails were being bounced back because our Internet MX record didn't match the servername.mycompany.local. Ok, good security and filtering on the recipients end. Do some research and technotes said to change the FQDN in Default SMTP Virtual Server to use the Internet MX record instead of servername.mycompany.local. Change is made, and now all the emails that were getting blocked are flowing just fine. Yeah! Problem: However, a fly in the ointment showed up immediately. Now when an application like SQL Mail or some other email sender sends an email thru servername.mycompany.local with a destination of any external domain besides user@mycompany.local (such as name@externalcompany.com), the email either disappears completely or returns a #5.7.1 smtp;550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for name@externalcompany.com Our internal relaying is on a DIFFERENT virtual SMTP server, along with a list of IP addresses that are allowed to relay. Making changes to the allowed relay list on this separate virtual server obviously doesn't help mail being routed thru the Default SMTP Virtual Server (I tried). Any idea what may have caused this? Is this actually a relaying problem, or something else? DNS? Thank you in advance for your kind help!!! Mak

Dear customer: Before analyze the issue, I want to explain FQDN more clearly. Use this text box to type the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the virtual server. You can specify a FQDN other than the one used by this computer. Note The FQDN that you type must be set up in Windows 2000 or 2003 DNS, or on an external DNS server. Click Check DNS button to confirm that the FQDN you typed is valid and resolves to an Internet Protocol (IP) address. In order to better troubleshoot the issue, please help collect the following information: 1. Post the complete NDR to the forum for analyze, 2. Some external emails were being bounced back because our Internet MX record didn't match the servername.mycompany.local. Does it means that the internal user cant send e-mail to external user or not? 3. To isolate the issue, create a new mailbox user and configure a MAPI profile, use the new user send e-mail to name@externalcompany.com, and check the effect. 4. Open Event Viewer, navigate to application, save the log as .evt file and delete it, 5. Set all categories under MSExchangeTransport component log level to maximum, for more information about how to do that, please refer to the following article: How to troubleshoot for Exchange Server 2003 transport issues http://support.microsoft.com/?id=821910 6. Enable message tracking according to the following steps: a) Start Exchange System Manager. b) Expand Servers, right-click the server that you want to use message tracking on, and then click Properties. c) On the General tab, click to select the Enable message tracking check box. This option logs information about the sender, the time the message was sent or received, the message size and priority, and the message recipients. d) In the Exchange System Manager dialog box, click OK. e) To record the subject of any message sent to, from, or through the server, click to select the Enable Subject Logging and Display check box. f) Please let me know the names of sender and recipient. 7. Reproduce the issue and send the latest message tracking log tov-rocwan@microsoft.com for analyze. 8. Open Event Viewer, navigate to application, save the log as .evt file and send it to me. Note: when you send e-mail to me, please add the subject of the post. Thanks for your cooperation. Rock Wang - MSFT

Rock, I tried to email you directly with the information rather than posting all of it here. However, the addressrocwan@microsoft.com comes back as unknown with an undeliverable. Is that the correct address? Thank you! Mak

Dear customer: Sorry for inconvenience, my e-mail address is v-rocwan@microsoft.com. Please send it again. When you send e-mail to me, please let me know the subject of the post. Thanks for your cooperation. Rock Wang - MSFT

Dear customer: From your event log, I found the following information: Event Type: Error Event Source: MSExchangeTransport Event Category: SMTP Protocol Event ID: 7010 Date: 9/19/2008 Time: 7:30:03 AM User: N/A Computer: SCS-MAIL Description: This is an SMTP protocol log for virtual server ID 1, connection #196. The client at "10.16.18.26" sent a "rcpt" command, and the SMTP server responded with "550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for john.jurkowski@xxx.com ". The full command sent was "rcpt TO:<john.jurkowski@xxx.com>". This will probably cause the connection to fail. From your reply, Created a new mailbox, configured a MAPI profile and the email to name@externalcompany.com worked fine. However, messages sent from SYSTEM A still do not reach name@externalcompany.com. It seems that the issue is related to SYSTEM A not the Exchange server. Can you change the FQDN back to original name and test again, and send the following message tracking log to me. D:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\SCS-MAIL.log In addition, I havent received the following log, it maybe blocked by our antis-spam software. Please compress it to .rar file and send to me again. D:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\SCS-MAIL.log Thanks for your cooperation. Rock Wang MSFT

Dear customer: Thanks for your reply. From your ex080918.log file, I found that you collect SMTP protocol log, please collect Message tracking log again, you can find it at \\Your_Server_Name\Your_Server_Name.log folder. Reproduce the issue, and send the latest log file to me for analyze. In addition, to isolate the issue, please enable protocol substatus(sc-substatus) option on advanced tab in logging properties, and reproduce the issue, and send the latest log file to me for analyze. Please let me know the sender and recipient. Thanks for your cooperation. Rock Wang - MSFT

Dear customer: Thanks for your reply. You can try the following steps to fix your issue: 1. Create a new SMTP virtual server in ESM, note you should use another IP address or port number not default 25 port. 2. right click the new SMTP virtual server, click properties, click access tab, click relay, make sure you select Only the list below option, click add, input the IP address of the computer where your application resides in. 3. Restart the new SMTP virtual server and check the effect. In addition, please try to send test e-mail to one external user not a distribution group list via your application. Thanks for your cooperation. Rock Wang - MSFT