[dcmcgrain]

Hi,

I recently got a virus, which I believe has been all cleared up now.

From what I can tell through running tests based on Microsoft's Knowledge Base, etc, Port 25 (used to send e-mail via Outlook and other programs) is now closed on my computer. The virus, as I said, is gone (I think). I have also disabled all my virus firewall protection, etc etc at the recommendation of many people who told me it could be blocking the port. But the tests I ran with Microsoft (Telnet tests) do not show the port as open or listening.

I looked all over, but I haven't been able to figure out how to re-open the port, though!

I use two accounts with Outlook Express 6.0. Comcast and my University's mail system. Comcast is not affected because it does not allow Port 25 and requires me to use an SSL port or whatever. My Umail account, however, does not allow SSL.

Actually, I made a mistake. I have not found any fix... I thought I had (which was here) but I made a mistake and was actually sending mail from the wrong account.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

-D

Edited by dcmcgrain, 16 May 2005 - 09:19 PM.

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Detailed explanation
Since the last months, the number of viruses propagating by mail and running their own SMTP engine has been dramatically increasing. Those viruses work in a simple way: when a computer is infected, the virus scans files on the disk drive, searching for email addresses, and sending itself to each collected email address, using another collected address as sender.

That kind of virus attack is creating huge performance problems on the network, and for this reason many ISPs have closed the SMTP port (25) for outgoing connections from their customers, so an infected computer cannot propagate viruses to any external email address by itself.
The unfortunate side effect of this measure is that legitimate customers cannot connect anymore to external SMTP servers, and particularly to CERN SMTP servers, to send mails.

Check and see if your ISP has shut down access via this port because it detected problems with your address.

"Nowadays, many Internet providers are closing their SMTP servers and filtering all the incoming SMTP traffic to fight Spam. They let everybody in from their local network. And filter everybody out who is not. This means that as long as you are using their services, your email client is working fine, but what happens when you go on a business trip or vacation and you want to send an email from an airport or hotel room? In most cases your SMTP server is not accessible to you anymore since you are trying to get to it from outside of your ISP's network."

Some ISP's prevent their users from accessing "outside" SMTP servers using conventional e-mail programs like Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape. The error message will look like:
"Unable to connect to the server. (Account:'account', SMTP Server: 'mail.YOUR_DOMAIN.com', Error Number: '0x800ccc0e')."

To verify that your ISP closed SMTP connections on port 25 you need to "telnet" to SMTP server from the Command prompt (DOS prompt):

telnet mail.YOUR_DOMAIN 25

You will either receive SMTP server prompt, or "connection refused" message, or timeout.

In the case you receive "connection refused" message or timeout, you need to contact your ISP with the request to open port 25 in their firewall or proxy. Or, try using their SMTP server for your outbound mail connection.

Ron

[Major Payne]

Detailed explanation
Since the last months, the number of viruses propagating by mail and running their own SMTP engine has been dramatically increasing. Those viruses work in a simple way: when a computer is infected, the virus scans files on the disk drive, searching for email addresses, and sending itself to each collected email address, using another collected address as sender.

That kind of virus attack is creating huge performance problems on the network, and for this reason many ISPs have closed the SMTP port (25) for outgoing connections from their customers, so an infected computer cannot propagate viruses to any external email address by itself.
The unfortunate side effect of this measure is that legitimate customers cannot connect anymore to external SMTP servers, and particularly to CERN SMTP servers, to send mails.

Check and see if your ISP has shut down access via this port because it detected problems with your address.

"Nowadays, many Internet providers are closing their SMTP servers and filtering all the incoming SMTP traffic to fight Spam. They let everybody in from their local network. And filter everybody out who is not. This means that as long as you are using their services, your email client is working fine, but what happens when you go on a business trip or vacation and you want to send an email from an airport or hotel room? In most cases your SMTP server is not accessible to you anymore since you are trying to get to it from outside of your ISP's network."

Some ISP's prevent their users from accessing "outside" SMTP servers using conventional e-mail programs like Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape. The error message will look like:
"Unable to connect to the server. (Account:'account', SMTP Server: 'mail.YOUR_DOMAIN.com', Error Number: '0x800ccc0e')."

To verify that your ISP closed SMTP connections on port 25 you need to "telnet" to SMTP server from the Command prompt (DOS prompt):

telnet mail.YOUR_DOMAIN 25

You will either receive SMTP server prompt, or "connection refused" message, or timeout.

In the case you receive "connection refused" message or timeout, you need to contact your ISP with the request to open port 25 in their firewall or proxy. Or, try using their SMTP server for your outbound mail connection.

Ron

[dcmcgrain]

Thanks for the help.

I have contacted my ISP and mail servers... they say they are not blocking or controlling Port 25 at all and it should be working.

Can't figure this out.

Now I'm also getting a blue screen page fault 0x00000050 error on boot up, saying it may have to do with new hardware or software - but my most recently installed software was an update to my virus scanner and my most recent hardware update was MONTHS ago.

i dont get this at all.

[Major Payne]

Not sure if this may be the problem, but did you just get an update of :

KB891711.EXE?


This may be giving you trouble. It's uninstallable in Add/Remove Programs (I think).

Try disabling it in Start>Run, type in: msconfig

Look in Startup list, uncheck the line that loads the KB891711.EXE. Reboot and see if that clears up some of your problems.

Ron