Question: I am working on a problem with one of my customers that restored their exchange server from backup. Messages send out no problem but the server wont respond to SMTP for incomming mesages. I test the port with telnet <Ip Address> 25 but I see no response, any keyboard input brings me back to the command line. I cant help thinking this is a simple fix but I am stumped. Please help

This can be result a lot of things. From where you are trying to do the telnet.1. If from the local machine, then try to disable the windows FW (server 2003 or 2008), check if the AV is configured well and allows the traffic on port 25.2. If from the FW or out side the FW, check if the FW is allowing you to connect on port 25.3. If from some other machine on the LAN, see if there is any FW or any other device which can block the port 25.Last but not the least , switch on the echo on the command promt with SET LOCAL_ECHO command. Raj

I agree, I am testing from the local console of the broken Exchange 2003 server. There is no firewall or port filters configured on this server and the connector is open to all addresses and allows anynomous connections. I expect to see the 220 response with telnet to port 25 but I only get a blank screen unless I press a key where it falls back to the command prompt. It seems like Exchange opened the port but there is no application listening to it. I have diagnostics set to max for several items in transport and DS access but nothing meaningful apears.

Can you try telnetting other ports like 80 or 443 and see the result. I am sure it will listen on 80.Raj

How was this server restored?have you run ExBpa against the server?

Check your AV settings, see if port 25 is being blocked.SF - MCITP:EMA, MCTS: Exchange 2010, Exchange 2007, MOSS 2007, OCS 2007 -- http://www.scottfeltmann.com

I'm told the server was restored via NTBackup.

I finally reinstalled Exchange and the SP2 which fixed the problem. Thank you All.

Foot note: I found the site information incorrectly defined the network, some unregistered DLL files and there was a problem where the Exchange server could not correctly resolve the domain and AD DNS information. I these were also contributing issues to the problem.