Can not send email to a domain we previously hosted their email 3

[scottew]

The owner of my company has set up another company and during the start up, we were hosting their email. Over the weekend, I have moved them over to their own Hosted Exchange Server in order to seperate everything.

Originally they wanted to have the users remain in our GAL so I created a contact to forward their mail. Some users started getting rejections and I have been asked to just delete these users all together.

So, the problem is that I am getting the following rejection:

      User on 6/1/2009 11:43 AM
            A configuration error in the e-mail system caused the message to bounce between two servers or to be forwarded between two recipients.  Contact your administrator.
            <mail.mydomain.com #5.4.6>

In the event viewer, I am receiving the following:

Cause: A forward loop was detected by the categorizer. This is a common hosting configuration problem caused when someone uses the provisioning tool to create a contact in one organization unit and creates a user in a different organization user that share the same e-mail address.    
Solution: Verify that you do not have a user in organizational unit and a contact in a different organizational unit that have the same e-mail address.

I had verified that the contact and users did not share the same email address, so I'm not sure how this happened.

Anyway, I have since deleted all the users and contacts to make sure there are no duplications.

I did all of this today, so it is just a matter of time of Exchange/AD updating until I can send DomainB.

 

[58sniper]

If you are no longer hosting email for those other users, make sure their SMTP domain no longer appears in a recipient policy.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[markdmac]

Also make sure you no longer have a zone for them in your DNS.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[scottew]

Thank you both for your responses. So far, this is what I have done..

Friday
1. Changed MX Record
2. Removed their domain from the recipient policy
3. Exmerged out all of their data

Saturday
1. Uploaded all of their data
2. Restored all mailboxes

At this point everyting was working fine.

Monday
1. Users were still in our system
2. Removed their SMTP address from the users.
3. Created contacts in order to forward mail if someone picked their name for the GAL.

Note: On one users, I had forgotten to remove their STMP address and it did not allow me to create contact.

4. Deleted all users and mailboxes from AD.

I just checked DNS to make sure their are no zones for their domain and their is not.

Is there anything else I can check to see why the emails are not going through?

Thanks again,
Scott

 

[markdmac]

Flush your DNS cache. Do a tracert to their mail server. Try to telnet on port 25 to their new mail server.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[scottew]

I flushed DNS on the Exchange Server and DC.

The tracert was succesfull to the hosted exchange server.

I was able to telnet into their server. I sent a user a test message which was sucessful. They replied to me, but when I replied to that, I got the following rejection:

      'User' on 6/1/2009 4:01 PM
            The e-mail account does not exist at the organization this message was sent to.  Check the e-mail address, or contact the recipient directly to find out the correct address.
            <mail.mydomain.com #5.1.1>

It appears that it is looking for the user on our system.

Thanks,
Scott

 

[markdmac]

You probably have an entry for the user in your NK2 file. Compose a new message, start typing the name. When you see it in the list, press the down arrow to select the name and hit the delete button.

Make sure the header information from the email coming back is correct. Is it possible the user is using the same PC they did before? If so perhaps their reply to address is incorrect.



I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[scottew]

I created a unique name on the Hosted Exchange Server that was never set up on my server. When I send an email to that address, I get the rejection immediately from my server.

I did check the headers from the users reply and it looked correct.

Scott

 

[markdmac]

Use IPtools.com and verify that the IP, reverse DNS and SPF records are all setup properly.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[58sniper]

If the message bounced on a reply it's not a nickname issue. Check all of your recipient policies. Sound like it's still in there somewhere.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[scottew]

I finally resolved the issue. Last night I had logged into our Citrix Server to work on it. While I was testing, the emails were going through fine. So I thought the problem was resolved on it's own somehow.

Then I get to work this morning, test it from my machine and I get rejections.

Since Outlook on the Citrix Server does not used Exchange Cached Mode, the emails were going through. I had to delete the .ost file on my machine and then Outlook recreate it.

Now everything is working fine.

Thank you both for your efforts in helping me resolve this issue.

 

[markdmac]

Ah, you likely did not need to delete the OST, rather you needed to download a new copy of the OAB.

When in cached mode, what you think is the GAL is really the OAB (Offline Address Book).

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[58sniper]

And the fact that it's likely an OAB issue means you should troubleshoot further.

In Outlook,
Tools>Send/Receive>Download Address Book
Chose 'Download changes since last Send/Receive' and 'full details'. If there is a problem downloading that, it could be indicative of other issues. But, one of the symptoms of an out of date OAB is new users don't show up.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[scottew]

I successfully downloaded the OAB on my machine as well as a couple of others.

Thanks again.
Scott

 

[markdmac]

Depending on the size of the organization, OAB replication can take between 24 to 48 hours. So I don't find it all that surprising.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.