I know I was getting emails through using Mercury before my W7 re-install. I know I was doing substantial 'testing' of Mercury's functions and parameters without it ever crashing. Now I'm NOT having that success at all.

I apologize I think I have shown bad attitude in coming in to this wanting to prove it was some sort of a uninstall/reinstall application problem. 

Thomas is correct. I am barred from the SMTP "E" system. I must have been using SMTP "C" when I was having successes. 

I have switched to SMTP C. The crashes are back. I start Merc the first time and can go through everything. I send my email. It crashes. I restart, it crashes. I clear the Queue and can sucessfully restart I can then go through it (until I try to send another email). The crashes are too fast to read the messages in the consoles. After it all: 1) there are a few queue entries for the one email, 2) no mercury C logging entries,

3) 1 mercury C session entry  ...

22:18:33.843: --- Sat Jan 22 22:18:33 2011 ---
22:18:33.843: Connect to '(null)', timeout 30.
22:22:51.385: --- Sat Jan 22 22:22:51 2011 ---
22:22:51.385: Connect to '(null)', timeout 30.
22:24:50.211: --- Sat Jan 22 22:24:50 2011 ---
22:24:50.211: Connect to '(null)', timeout 30.

It certainly crashed in less than 30 seconds!

Yes, there are STRANGE things going on with my ports that I am looking into more before I conclude anything, but hope someone can reason the problem from the only messages I can find.

I loaded Pegasus and Mercury months ago and they ran out of the box and Merc was extremely helpful getting me beyond debugging php mailing. I did a Windows 7 reinstall when something else caused boot problems. After that Mercury was extremely oddly behaved (kept crashing) I had to go as far as to completely remove and relaod both programs before Mercury would run again, and I believe it was caused by a unapproved firewall option from the reinstall that I turned off.

Now, I CANNOT send an email. For weeks I have been through numerous reinstalls, parameter tries, loader vs not loader, and I go in circles through "loopbacks detected mail cancelled" and "MX Resolution errors" and "just sits there forcing poll". I've tried putting my DNS server which accd to network LAN ethernet adapter  is my router address 192.168.1.1 in the blank SMTP E box, I'm not willing to try "opendns's" or anything else and I have no idea what, if anything, was in that box when this was working perfectly.I need to have localhost and 127.0.0.1 mapped in the hosts file re. configuring web servers and have tried w/w/out 127. ... in the domains (how EXACTLY would I put this in???). I have email addresses set up for admin and emaillist that are being used. I'm down to the bare Mercury S P and E. 

I hope someone can help me walk through another try ...

delete mercury folder (check: no mercury service exists)

new installation

no netware support

C:\MERCURY

C:\PMAIL\Programs, C:\PMAIL\MAIL

Mercury S P > E

localhost admin@localhost

normal relay controls

C:\MERCURY\QUEUE

no service/no spam stuff

start

RUN (the not loader)

configuration

The E dns entry is empty

'emaillist' user is still in the users (from pegasus config)

there is two localhost/localhost entries in domains

execute

The email I sent over and over again long ago is sent ...

Temporary error 249 (temporary MX resolution error) resolving 'gmail.com'.

force poll: just hangs there

3 entries in queue

core log: O 20110120 2323 MG000001 emaillist@localhost xxxxxxx@gmail.com 743

mercury E:  

T 20110120 232318 4d3860a6 Begin processing job MO000002 from emaillist@localhost
W 20110120 232318 4d3860a6 Temporary error 249 (temporary MX resolution error) resolving 'gmail.com'.
T 20110120 232318 4d3860a6 Job MO000002 processing complete.

mercury S

:T 20110120 232318 4d3860a6 Begin processing job MO000002 from emaillist@localhost
W 20110120 232318 4d3860a6 Temporary error 249 (temporary MX resolution error) resolving 'gmail.com'.
T 20110120 232318 4d3860a6 Job MO000002 processing complete.

.ini attached (if this is useless would someone delete it for me?)

WHAT DO I DO FROM HERE?

> WHAT DO I DO FROM HERE?

1.  Let us see your mercury.ini file.

2.  Make sure you have the IP addresses of your DNS host(s) entered in the MercuryE setup.

3.  Make sure the firewall is not blocking Mercury

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]

> WHAT DO I DO FROM HERE?

1.  Let us see your mercury.ini file.

2.  Make sure you have the IP addresses of your DNS host(s) entered in the MercuryE setup.

3.  Make sure the firewall is not blocking Mercury

[/quote]

1.  Mercury.ini is attached to my original post (but it is copied to/called "MERCURY - Copy.txt" because the server here will not allow the upload of ".ini" files.)

2. As far as I know you are referring to the empty box in 

CONFIGURATION

MERCURY E

NAME SERVERS

According to my Network Connections that is called 192.168.1.1 which is the address of my router. I have tried that and the same result.

I'm not sure why that setting would be needed now and not before (when this worked 'out of the box').

OK, I have tried opendns servers. We're getting somewhere THANK YOU. But only as far as "connection errors". ...

Connection error during handshake with 75.180.132.244.

Attempting connection to alternate, 75.180.132.244

Connection error on alternate.

3. Can I please ask why you think a firewall would block nameservers?

I have all windows 7 firewall options OFF

I have Avast free antivirus which I believe does not have any firewall options

I have Zone Alarm free firewall. Mercury.exe has full access. I see NO mercury items in all of the "free firewall" log entries today (after connection errors above) and past few days and the only entry that I don't understand is one with akamai.net on it. I see no options in ZA for blocking by port or service.

I will investigate the ports further and send an email (again) to my ISP to ask what ports they are blocking (they have previously replied NO PORTS ARE BLOCKED.

Until then (soon) I look forward to anyone's further feedback so far. Does anyone see errors in my INI file (attached to the original post)?

Thanks. Feedback helps!

If you use DSL or Cable-Modem etc. (dynamic IP-Address):

Use MercuryC (not MercuryE) and configure the SMTP-Server of your ISP incl. correct authentication.

Today  mailserver reject mails from dynamic IP-Addrs

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSBL

Cheers   Opa56

>  Thomas R. Stephenson:
> > WHAT DO I DO FROM HERE?
> > 1.  Let us see your mercury.ini file.
> > 2.  Make sure you have the IP addresses of your DNS host(s) entered in the MercuryE setup.
> > 3.  Make sure the firewall is not blocking Mercury
>
>  
>
>
> 1.  Mercury.ini is attached to my original post (but it is copied
> to/called "MERCURY - Copy.txt" because the server here will not allow
> the upload of ".ini" files.)

Ok. I missed that.  You could have just pasted it into the message. I see you are using localhost for the "Internet name for this system" and if that means that you do not have a fixed IP address and host name then  that means you cannot use MercuryE since many (most) major ISPs block access to those using a randomly assigned IP address.  You might need to convert to MercuryC for sending.

>
>
> 2. As far as I know you are referring to the empty box in
> CONFIGURATION
> MERCURY E
> NAME SERVERS
> According to my Network Connections that is called 192.168.1.1 which is the address of my router. I have tried that and the same result.
> I'm not sure why that setting would be needed now and not before (when this worked 'out of the box').
> OK, I have tried opendns servers. We're getting somewhere THANK YOU. But only as far as "connection errors". ...
> Connection error during handshake with 75.180.132.244.
>
> Attempting connection to alternate, 75.180.132.244
>
> Connection error on alternate.

This could be the receiver rejecting the randomly assigned IP address.  You would need to turn on MercuryE session logging to find out the details.

>
>
>
>
> 3. Can I please ask why you think a firewall would block nameservers?

It blocks applications from accessing the internet and is the name server in not local then it will block.

> I have all windows 7 firewall options OFF

Good, it's pretty worthless anyway.

> I have Avast free antivirus which I believe does not have any firewall options

Agreed, but it does set between the application and the server when doing SMTP operations.

> I have Zone Alarm free firewall. Mercury.exe has full access. I see NO
> mercury items in all of the "free firewall" log entries today and past
> few days and the only entry that I don't understand is one with
> akamai.net on it.

I dumped Zone Alarm years ago since it randomly blocked access by applications no matter how it was setup.

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"] I see you are using localhost for the "Internet name for this system" and if that means that you do not have a fixed IP address and host name then  that means you cannot use MercuryE since many (most) major ISPs block access to those using a randomly assigned IP address.  You might need to convert to MercuryC for sending.[/quote]

I had no problems emailling myself all over the world using E before all this came about.

This could be the receiver rejecting the randomly assigned IP address.  You would need to turn on MercuryE session logging to find out the details.[/quote]

I just realized that the ip addresses quoted by Mercury 'connection errors'  are  the ip's of the mail server I was trying to reach at the time (not the IP's of the nameservers!!) therefore I have "gotten through" the nameservers. I still can't understand why I didn't need to specifically assign nameservers the first time (before the reload). I'd prefer this work with my standard internet config.

[/quote]

I  think it's impossible Avast or Zone Alarm are  blocking the mail server connection. Why didn't my prior AV/firewall block it too?  But I'll take all your insights into account for another day of trying to get to this to work agaiin.

Notebene: In your comment on Avast in the way of email  are you refering to Avast A/V email scanning? I have NEVER had any A/V email attachement or anything else for email on. I am one of those who learned in the early days just not to open up attachments without great care (and always view  file extensions). For that matter I've never enabled A/V send mail options either (like worm stooppers, etc.). I neither need any social networking or IM options either. AV is real time file scan and web scan only for me.

But I THANK  you for the suggestion.

I'm checking Zone Alarm today.