undeliverable email -- weird one

[e46fan]

I have one user on one machine that can not get a email sent to one specific email address. She gets a undeliverable reciept. All her other outgoing emails get delivered fine (all these are external email addresses).We all go through the same exchange 5.5 server. I can send to that same email address on my machine and it will get delivered. The only thing that has changed recently is we changed ISP when we went from DSL to T1, so our IP's and DNS changed.

Any ideas where to start? I am lost on this one.

Thanks in advance!

 

[RichardMoran]

I've experienced a similar problem on a couple of occasions. Each time the problem was caused by a corrupt e-mail address stored in the contact details.

If I used any other machine it worked fine, because I was manually typing in the full e-mail address. On the problem machine the user was typing in the recipient name, and the e-mail address was being pulled in automatically. The e-mail address was displayed correctly in the field, but it was in fact corrupted. It was just a case of deleting and re-creating the address data on the contact screen.

I suppose in the same way, it could be a corruption in the nickname list. If the user lets the TO field be autocompleted when they start typing in a name, it too could be pulling in corrupt data.

I don't know if this helps.

Rik

 

[e46fan]

Thanks Richard, I had tried that and still having the same problem. This is sooooo weird.

Thanks again!

 

[RichardMoran]

If you log in as you, on her PC, can you access your mail profile and send the message okay?

I was womdering if the problem was related to her profile rather than the configuration of the PC.

Rik

 

[e46fan]

Yes I can send ok on her machine under my profile. It appears I can send to this person ok using any other user profile.

Here is the undeliverable receipt. The pamf@mailcci.com is the sender I am having problems with.

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: FW: Test e-mail
Sent: 12/10/2004 10:59 AM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

Jane (E-mail) on 12/10/2004 10:59 AM
Unable to deliver the message due to a communications failure
The MTS-ID of the original message is: c=US;a= ;p=Contemporary Com;l=CCINT1-041210165852Z-1056
MSEXCH:IMS:Cont Comm:CCI:CCIT 3550 (000B099C) 550 5.0.0 <pamf@mailcci.com>... User Unknown

Thanks again for your help!

 

[RichardMoran]

Can you log in as her on another machine and successfully send the mail?

If you can, then you have eliminated any problems at the server end. You know that her PC is okay because you can still send the message through your account. By a process of elimination it would seem to suggest a problem with her local profile on the PC. I would suggest re-creating her local profile if this is the case.

If you can't send the message through her account on another PC, then the problem would seem to be in her Exchange account. I would be tempted to create another Exchange account for her, as this is probably the quickest route to go.

I always find that when I get really odd problems, it's too easy to get involved in the details. The sensible thing is to split the problem into it's component parts and eliminate them one at a time.

Hopefully we've split this down to a point where you can resolve it.

Rik

 

[e46fan]

Here's what I have done so far.

I or anybody else the building can send email to this person successfully using their own account.

I have set up a brand new pc and she can not send to her with her login. Change the login and email account to someone else and the mail will be delievered fine.

I created a new account for her. The old account was pfleming, the new account is psfleming. Under that new account, the mail will not be delivered to that person. It comes back with the same non delievering message, except is says psfleming@mailcci.com instead of pfleming@mailcci.com. I did not delete the old, only logged in with the new account and set Outlook to use the new account.

If I login under my name on her machine and set outlook to use my account the email will be delivered fine.

Since it does not look like its the pc or the exchange account. Could it be possible that the reciepent has some block or something going on here?

Thanks for any help. This is a tough one.

 

[e46fan]

I found the problem!! It was at the ISP. Apparently we would have had this problem to anyone we sent to that has service with Nuvox, which is who we switched to for the T1 and when the problem started. Apparently when they made the MX record changes, they left some entry in there which made it look like they was hosting our email, which their not, but that is why we was getting messages back showing "user unknown".

Thanks for all the suggestions and sorry but I would have guessed this one.

 

[RichardMoran]

I still don't understand why it only affected one user. I would have thought that anyone from your domain would have the same problem.

Anyway, at least it's working now which is the most important thing!

Rik

 

[e46fan]

Actually this afternoon another person that was ok last week had one returned from her too. I don't know if its because we still have active service from our old ISP and it was hitting on old MX records or what. Anyway, just a very strange one and it being working is the most important thing.

Thanks again.