Message transferred to through SMTP

[TimKidney]

We are having an intermittent problem with our Exchange 2003 server. Outgoing SMTP messages are forwarded through a smarthost. Occasionally some messages are never forwarded to their recipient.

Exhange queues are empty and the message does not appear in BadMail. I have also searched SMTP logs both on the Exchange Server and on the smarthost. The messages were never transmitted.

It is not a particular domain or email address that has the problem. As far as I can tell it is random.

Whenever it happens, message tracking shows:

"Message transferred to through SMTP". (On the last line)
Ive attached a jpg of the message history from Message Tracking Centre showing a completed Message transferred to .. which arrives at its destination and one without a server entry that doesnt.

Please note the extra space where the domain name should be.

No NDR is received, the message simply disappears.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[people3]

HI,

I have seen the same issue when we were sending mail to customers with a cisco PIX firewall with FIXUP enabled.

When it fails to a particular recipient, if you send it again does it go through, or does it always disappear \ fail?

 

[debsw1]

Hi

Did you get your problem resolved, with have exactly the same issue. The customer in question does not have a Cisco PIX firewall in place.

Odd random emails appear to get through but the majority of emails don't, there doesn't appear to be any pattern to the issue.

Any help / idea's would be gratefully received.

 

[ntinlin]

God, I remember the FIXUP problem. I had massive issues with that one time. My tame comms guy had set it correctly and we tested it all as working. He then went on vacation and another comms guy decided to change things back again without bothering to ask anyone why the change was made in the first place.
Beat my head against a brick wall getting 'no we haven't changed a thing responses' while not being able to get an SMTP session to complete until 1st guy came back and corrected it in 30 secs.

 

[debsw1]

Thanks for the post, we have managed to sort the issue, the hotfix from the following article had to be installed. Touch wood all now up and working.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950757

Regards
Debbie