Can't Send or Receive

[bwind]

I've set up a new Exch2K server. I've finally gotten everything set up(or running at least)...all users that were in AD have enabled mailboxes,etc.
Now I can't send or receive.
Here's the specs:
Firewall with incoming smtp port opened to the internal ip of Exchange, ditto for telnet. Outgoing has smtp,etc open.
Name of domain is melc.com
Name of exchange server is melcxs1
Name of organization in Exchange is MELC
Our ISP has our A record set correctly I checked on dnsreports.com
We have 2 mx records so that users can pull from the ISP as they have while I set up new Exchange svr. So the first MX record is set to my new ES and the second is to the ISP. I'm not sure this matters because when I take out the ISP pop settings on my outlook and just leave the ES it still doesn't send or recieve. When I check the First Admin Group/MELCXS1/default virtual server queues I can see the message that I sent to my yahoo account sitting there. I can also see that I am logged on in the mailbox store.
When I telnetto the exchange server at the exchange server using C:\telnet melcxs1:25 or C:\telnet 10.1.1.3:25 I get 'could not open a connection to host on port 23: connect failed'.
I have the ports closed right now on the firewall because if I direct them, all email then bounces instead of sticking to the new exchange server or heading on to the second mx at my ISP and users need their email
I opened the ports on the firewall then I sent myself an email from my yahoo account and this is what I got back from the bounce:
MAILER-DAEMON@yahoo.com wroteate: 15 Jan 2003 19:17:25 -0000
From: MAILER-DAEMON@yahoo.com
To: btw_3@yahoo.com
Subject: failure delivery

Message from yahoo.com.
Unable to deliver message to the following address(es).

:
209.71.1.98 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for bwind@melc.org
Giving up on 209.71.1.98



Please help!

 

[bwind]

Anybody?

 

[brontosaurus]

ok, first off, the telnet thing won't work with that syntax. Don't use a colon, just a space. Next, let's talk about your real domain name, is it melc.com? If not, please provide the real one so I can look at the records...

 

[lanamater]

When I do nslookup on melc.com it comes back as 207.44.133.53

Yet the bounce from Yahoo is 209.71.1.98

This most likely means your ISP has not redirected your MX records to send mail (user@melc.com) to your external firewall address. This is probably getting the relay error because your ISP does not relay to you.

You should call your ISP and tell them you have installed Exchange 2000 (which uses SMTP) and to point the MX records to your external firewall address. This takes a few hours depending on the provider, but that should fix the problem.

Let me know what happens.

 

[bwind]

I actually got it up and running. It had to do with the extra load balancing NIC card being turned off. Once I turned it on everything worked great(accept for 2 desktops that didn't want to resolve the exchange settings...but that's not an issue now)

So...then I had a great time this weekend as I finally set everyone up and then moved the server into place and then decided it'd be a great time to run the service pack on the PDC and it died...or nearly. I had to do a restore...long hours/days later and now I'm having trouble getting the exchange server to communicate with the PDC. I even tried starting from scratch: a fresh install of the OS but when I try to promote it to a DC now it won't...dns insanity I think. I've been on so many sites my head is about to blow.
DNS pointing to main DC. NSLOOKUP gives a failed to resolve but then it gives the IP. i.e. if i type NSLOOKUP on the exchange server it gives me a can't find server name for address 10.1.1.10: Non-existant domain but then returns the melc-fp.melc.com with the IP at the end. I can ping the 10.1.1.10 and it works. I've tried all kinds of different DNS config's for the exchange server thinking that one of them will let me start the dcpromo, but nada.
I've tried netdiag.exe /fix on the PDC thinking that I'll get the DNS server to work properly...but still doesn't.
anyhelp would be appreciated.

 

[bwind]

Oh and the double bounce or wrong nslookup might have to do with our domain being hosted by our ISP...the ip that you gave...and our 2 MX records pointing 1 to my new exchange and 2 to the old ISP. So that while I set up the exchange/test it...I could turn on/off the firewall port for smtp/etc and it would go to the isp(2) and when I turned it open it would come into our new server...??make sense?