My daughter’s email client quit working. It can’t reach the SMTP server or POP server. I can’t telnet to either one, either. Odd thing is that I can ping them.
I can get to both of them on my own computer, and we’re on the same home network.
I figured it was a firewall issue so I turned off every firewall I could find and it still didn’t work.
Any other ideas for troubleshooting?
What error is her email client throwing up?
Google the error, and also Google “fix winsock [her OS]” (if Windows)
Did you verify that her computer’s ping resolved to the same IP address as your computer’s did? Or did you try to telnet using the IP address instead of DNS name? In other words, verify that you are both trying to talk to the exact same machine.
Is the machine running a telnet server?
I don’t understand this question. An SMTP server works by accepting telnet connections over port 25. What is the exact response when you attempt to telnet to port 25? Sometimes there is a firewall that has the port open, but only allows SMTP commands and then it won’t respond to ehlo, but it will a helo.
There is no response–the session fails to connect. (But I can telnet and do a HELO on my machine.)
I don’t have the error code handy but when I looked it up, Microsoft said that it was caused by sending mail while connected via MSN, which we do not use. In general, it seems this error occurs when you try to telnet to port 25 when your ISP blocks you from doing do. However, this is my ISP’s SMTP server, so that is not the case here (I do have this problem if I try to use any SMTP server besides my ISP). The same error occurs trying to connect to the POP server, which should never happen.
The frustrating thing is that everything works fine on the two other machines on the network.
Well, to boil stuff down to the obvious either the packets aren’t getting through from the machine, they’re not being return or they’re not getting back.
How’s the network set up, are you all using public IPs or is there a single IP address and you’re using NAT to get local IPs. Does the problem change if you use a different IP on the machine that’s broken?
I’m assuming that you’re all connected to the internet via a single point, is it possible that the affected machince is connected to a different ISP. I’ve seen this on wireless networks if it decides to connect to a nearby wireless net instead on my local one.
However, as you point out, POP should respond which makes it sound like a network issue rather than an ISP one. But if it responds to pings it sounds like an ISP issue.
Could more than one person have the same IP address?
I’d try grabbing WireShark and having a snoop around traffic on the network trying to see where the packets get dropped.
If you let us know how the network is arragned maybe someone can help further.
One irritating thing I found with ZoneAlarm was that even after I turn it off, it isn’t really off, it still blocks programs that have changed or are trying to request new access. But since it’s “off” it helpfully does not pop up a changed program warning. I have to turn the full firewall stack on, try the access, and then say “yes” when it pops up the warning about the “new or changed program attempting a different level of access.” It’s a pain in the ass, but in my experience, most weird problems like you’re describing have come down to this reason. Especially if you can telnet from one machine to another machine… that’s a dead giveaway that something is wrong with that machine.