..or perhaps v4.51 will fix it.

Hi,

Since installing Service Packs 1 for Vista, I have a problem with sending email. Sometimes (but not always) the SMTP send fails with the following error:

Delivery has failed on the enclosed message for the following
reasons reported either by the mail delivery system on the mail
relay host or by the local TCP/IP transport module:

   *** TCP/IP error while processing job ***
   A network error has occurred while WinPMail attempted to send
   your message. This error could be caused by many conditions,
   including the following:
     * The remote host may have gone down.
     * Your network may have been broken or gone down.
     * You may have a configuration problem in your WINSOCK.DLL.
     * If running on a SLIP line, you may have experienced a
       timeout (increase the value in WinPMail's Network Config.
       Dialog), or the phone line may have gone down or suffered
       from excessive line noise.
   WinPMail will requeue your message and try again later.

Basically it seem to time-out? When this happens, the only way to get the message sent is to disconnect the ADSL connection, dial-up to the ISP on a modem, and re-send. This always works. But some outgoing messages (even fairly small ones) will simply not go through on ADSL, only on dial-up.

I have this problem on 3 Vista PCs recently upgraded to SP1, on three different locations and with three different ISPs... but the Vista PCs which have not been upgraded to SP1 are still working fine.

Any ideas....?

Thanks!

It would seem to have happened to the PC my wife works on as well. The university changed to Vista, and it worked till Monday, and the she started having the same problem. There is no common denomenator in the errors escept that it sometimes just doesn't want to send.

 Any Micro$oft gurus with an idea will be gladly listened to - I assume that the SP1 is the problem, as described in the subject.

 Thanks

 

I assume in both cases Vista is blocking WinPMail access to the internet.  Check the firewall settings, you might even want to turn it off for a bit to see if this helps.

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]

I assume in both cases Vista is blocking WinPMail access to the internet.  Check the firewall settings, you might even want to turn it off for a bit to see if this helps.

[/quote]

Thanks for that.... but it does not seem to be the case here. Please see some more info below:

a. I disabled the Vista firewall but it did not help.

b. It does sometimes (though not always) send-out the 'stuck' message after several retries, I would expect the firewall to behave more consistently if it was to blame?

c. It does send-out fine with no problem at all when using dial-up and nor broadband.

d. It is more likely to happen with larger messages, the send process will go up to around 95% and then hang. But sometimes very small messages with no attachment will not go through either.

e. I tried changing various MTU settings in the Registry using programs such as DrTCP (after looking it up on the Internet and reading some discussions on similar issues), but again no luck.

f. As said above, it is not related to the ISP or SMTP server in use, I have this problem with three different providers.

g. I am using McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.5i Patch 5, it can not be disabled completely (other than by un-installing it) but it does log any blocked activities, and there is nothing in the McAfee log...

Thanks again.

[quote user="navitims"]

It would seem to have happened to the PC my wife works on as well. The university changed to Vista, and it worked till Monday, and the she started having the same problem. There is no common denomenator in the errors escept that it sometimes just doesn't want to send.

 Any Micro$oft gurus with an idea will be gladly listened to - I assume that the SP1 is the problem, as described in the subject.

 Thanks

 

[/quote]

Do you know what anti-virus software is she using - mine is McAfee (see post above), and it would be good if we could eliminate this from the list of suspects...

Well, if I am right and this is a Vista SP1 issue, then I guess more people will get this problem in the weeks and months to come.... I will monitor this space to see if a solution comes up.

[quote user="markjay"]Well, if I am right and this is a Vista SP1 issue, then I guess more people will get this problem in the weeks and months to come.... I will monitor this space to see if a solution comes up.
[/quote]

I guess the Vista did not really take off then, seems like very few people are actually running Vista sp1...?

For what it's worth, I've got Vista + SP1 on my Vista Laptop (which doubles as my test system) and I can't get this error.

Can you capture the trace text in the dialog that WinPMail puts up when the error occurs? The trace text contains more information about the exact failure and may help work out what's going on. Alternatively, if you're using an older version of WinPMail that doesn't include the trace text, can you try turning on session logging and capturing a session log showing the error?

Cheers!

-- David --

G'Day -

I use WinPMail on both a laptop with Vista (shows v. 6.6001 SP1) and a desktop with XP Pro (v. 5.1.2600 SP2).  As of Fri the 11th, both quit sending mail.  Can retrieve, but not send.  Trace shows this -- 15: Peer connect failure (the host has refused the connection). --

Have tried prior POP3 authenticate and login POP3 (which was used before) and no fix.

Help????

TJ.
 

I suspect that the host is down.  What Host?  Can you telnet into port 25 of this host? Can you send via another SMTP host like GMail?

Sorry that I didn't include that info.  Host is up and running, I can send through mail2web.   How do I "telnet into port 25 of this host"? 

 TJ.

> Sorry that I didn't include that info.  Host is up and running, I can send through mail2web.  

 Still did not provide the host name for testing from here.

> How do I "telnet into port 25 of this host"?

Try the following:

Start | Run telnet svl78zxa97.lmms.lmco.com 25

You will see something like the following.  The ones with the numbers are from the server, the others I typed in.

<< 220 ESVCS.lmms.lmco.com Mercury/32 v3.01 SMTP/ESMTP server ready.
>> EHLO SVL78ZXA97
<< 250-ESVCS.lmms.lmco.com Hello SVL78ZXA97; ESMTPs are:
<< 250-TIME
<< 250-SIZE 5000000
<< 250-8BITMIME
<< 250-AUTH CRAM-MD5
<< 250 HELP
>> MAIL FROM:<support@stephens.sj.scruznet.com> SIZE=517
<< 250 Sender and size (517) OK - send RCPTs.
>> RCPT TO:<support@stephens.sj.scruznet.com>
<< 250 Recipient OK - send RCPT or DATA.
>> DATA
<< 354 OK, send data, end with CRLF.CRLF
>> From: "Thomas R. Stephenson" <support@stephens.sj.scruznet.com>
>> To: support@stephens.sj.scruznet.com
>> Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 11:35:28 -0800
>> Subject: Test #4
>>
>> Mail body
>> .
<< 250 Data received OK.
>> QUIT

The host is www.tlcranch.com. 

I tried the telnet that you provided on my XP Pro machine and it ran something then did nothing.  On my Vista laptop, it said it did not recognize telnet.

Thanks for your help so far.

TJ.

 The host is www.tlcranch.com.

 I used tlcranch.com as the host since the www.tlcranch.com is a CNAME.  This looks like a good server response to me.  I entered the text in bold.

Start | Run telnet tlcranch.com 25 

220-dryads.webserversystems.com ESMTP Exim 4.69 #1 Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:54:32 -0400
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,
220 and/or bulk e-mail.
ehlo thomas
250-dryads.webserversystems.com Hello c-24-62-178-188.hsd1.nh.comcast.net [24.62.178.188]
250-SIZE 52428800
250-PIPELINING
250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
250-STARTTLS
250 HELP

Since you cannot telnet into port 25 on this server it's quite possible your ISP is doing port 25 blocking. 

I believe it depends on the type of Internet connection you have. As said, when using modem dial-up I have no problems at all, the intermittent fault only comes-up when using the ADSL connection (both at home and at work).<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

I may be down to some configuration parameters on the ADSL router, which may be a common setup for the UK but not elsewhere. Also, as far as I know in the US Cable connection is far more common than ADSL, while in the UK it is the other way around, so possibly US users will not experience this. Actual error message transcript to follow...

When sending, it takes a couple of minutes before the sedn fails displaying the following on-screen error message:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>> 0025 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
>> 0016 250-PIPELINING
>> 0014 250-8BITMIME
>> 0019 250-SIZE 31457280
>> 0009 250-DSN
>> 0022 250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
>> 0015 250-DELIVERBY
>> 0010 250 HELP
<< 0012 AUTH LOGIN
>> 0018 334 VXNlcm5hbWU6
<< 0038 aXNhYWMuaGVpbnJpY2hAY2FyZG9uZXQubmV0
>> 0018 334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6
<< 0010 c29ueQ==
>> 0028 235 2.0.0 OK Authenticated
<< 0044 MAIL FROM:<**my email address**> SIZE=4510
>> 0047 250 2.1.0 <**my email address**>... Sender ok
<< 0026 RCPT TO:<***recipient email address**>
>> 0044 250 2.1.5 <***recipient email address**>... Recipient ok
<< 0006 DATA
>> 0050 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
8: Socket read timeout.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is followed by this rejection message in the New Mail Folder: 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

..also, I wouldn't mind trying a beta version of 4.51, if it was possible to get a copy.

It would help a lot if you were to use the session logging so we can see all of the transactions and times up to the point of failure

>> 0028 235 2.0.0 OK Authenticated
<< 0044 MAIL FROM:<**my email address**> SIZE=4510
>> 0047 250 2.1.0 <**my email address**>... Sender ok
<< 0026 RCPT TO:<***recipient email address**>
>> 0044 250 2.1.5 <***recipient email address**>... Recipient ok
<< 0006 DATA
>> 0050 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
8: Socket read timeout.

Hard to say if this a a simple timeout  or a packet fragmentation problem.  I would first increase the SMTP timeout to something like 120 seconds and if this did not help I would check for packet fragmentation.  The POP3/SMTP transmissions may fail if the MTU packet size is so large that a packet is fragmented.  In many cases the receiving system router blocks the receiving servers "packets fragmented" response to the sending system using "MTU Discovery".  These oversize packets are not accepted and so are resent.  This results in a timeout, generally at the end of the message transmission but it can be anywhere in the process.  You need to reduce the MTU size. Windows defaults to a 1500 MTU and many routers and DSL connections need 1492.  You might simply want to turn off the MTU Discovery operation.

You might want to get a copy of SG TCP Optimizer that I find quite handy.  http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php  This little utility will allow you to test your MTU for maximum size without fragmentation against specific servers.  If will also make it easy to adjust the MTU. 

And finally, does this computer, by chance, happen to have an NVidia NForce 4 chipset on the motherboard?  If so, many other have had this exact problem, and it turned out to be an optimization setting for the built in NIC which caused the problems with packet fragmentation. Disabling the advanced optimization capability called "checksum offload" made all the problems of sending SMTP mail via WinPMail disappear.

Thanks for that.

Playing around with the MTU settings helped a bit, but did not fix the problem altogether... I disabled MTU discovery, and also checked that the MTU on the Interface is the same as on the ADSL Router (1492), then enabled it again... no luck. Anyway, these are my current settings:

These seem to work best, though it is still timing-up now and then. I believe this is a specific issue for Vista SP1, since it happened on both my home PCs and my office PCs after installing sp1 on then, so hopefully as more people out there get Vista SP1 someone will eventually find the answer...