Outlook Express not sending email- HELP!

Factual Questions
1

There’s something wrong with my Outlook Express and I can’t figure it out. I seem to be receiving emails fine, but when I try to send, they just sit there in the Inbox. This has been an intermittent problem for the last few weeks, but I haven’t been able to send since yesterday. Sometimes it goes for days without sending, which is bad because I’m trying to run a business online.
When I click on the Send/Receive button, or when Outlook is supposed to receive email as scheduled, I get this error:

The connection to the server has failed. Account: 'Lauren ', Server: ‘www.hennadancer.com’, Protocol: SMTP, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10061, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E

I am using Windows 98 and Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1123 and my ISP is AOL. I’d really appreciate any suggestions (other than stop using Outlook or AOL, which I would LOVE to do but can’t right now.)
Thanks!

2

Who is your host for hennadancer.com? You might want to call them and confirm that all your settings are correct. The “www” in your smtp server address looks suspect to me.

If it works sporadically, and you haven’t changed any settings yourself, your phone call might end up as a complaint call because their SMTP server keeps going down.

3

Agreed. The SMTP should look something more like “smtp.hennadancer.com” or something similar.

4

If this problem happened to me, I would re-insert my user name and password, pop.hennadancer.com / smtp.hennadancer.com. For those not familiar, see http://www.hostinghelper.co.uk/help_center/help_center_article10/help_center_article10.shtml.

When the email works works, make it your default.

5

I put in the pop.hennadancer.com and smtp.hennadancer.com, and I get:

The host ‘smtp.hennadancer.com’ could not be found. Please verify that you have entered the server name correctly. Account: 'Lauren ', Server: ‘smtp.hennadancer.com’, Protocol: SMTP, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 11001, Error Number: 0x800CCC0D
The host ‘pop.hennadancer.com’ could not be found. Please verify that you have entered the server name correctly. Account: 'Lauren ', Server: ‘pop.hennadancer.com’, Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 11001, Error Number: 0x800CCC0D

I tried it with taking out the www. and just using hennadancer.com, just in case. Same error message as in the original post.

I’m fairly certain it was www.hennadancer.com, and I haven’t changed anything. I’ll call my server. That’s my web host, right?

6

Well, I just tried pinging mail.hennadancer.com and didn’t get a response. Nothing from pop.hennadancer.com or pop3.hennadancer.com either. I’d call your webhost and verify your settings.

7

I think this could be your problem right there. Oftentimes you can’t send email other than through the server of your own ISP, although you can receive.
Did your hennadancer email send OK through AOL until recently? If so, AOL may have closed that “loophole”.

Can you send AOL email with no probs?

8

I just checked with my webmistress, who is on the same server. Her settings are the same as mine, except it’s sleepingbaby.net instead of hennadancer.com.
I can send AOL mail fine, but I rarely do so.
I’ve talked to AOl and they say that the problem is not on their end. Then aGAIN, AOL tech support is legendary…

9

Does AOL block port 25? I think they might have followed A LOT of other major ISPs in blocking this to prevent people from sending spam.

I afraid that this would essentially prevent you from receiving any non @aol.com email using SMTP and AOL as an ISP.

10

Hmmm…
I’m not sending mail through the AOL address, though. Would it matter? My mail is through my web host, which has a web-based email reader which I dislike intensely. I don’t use my AOL address at all.

11

I was hoping someone would come along that could explain this better than me but no such luck, so I’ll have a go…

I’m convinced from your error message that your problem is that AOL has closed the SMTP port 25. This would only allow you to send email through their mail servers using your @aol.com email address and not send mail to another mail server through them.

To put it another way, you are technically trying to use AOL’s connection to the internet to send email to another mail server. By closing port 25, this prevents spamers from creating their own mail server, signing up for AOL and then using that connection to send spam from their server through their AOL connection. Does that make any sense? Probably not, I’m having the worst time explaining it.

Try googling for “Port 25 Blocking” for more info. Or call AOL and specifically ask them about Port 25 blocking.

Here’s a MS knowledgebase article about it. They are discussing MSN in paticular but the same probably holds for AOL

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;300942

If this is the situation, most likely you’ll need to find another ISP that’ll allow you to do this.

12

I would find out what AOL’s smtp server is, and try putting that in OE. You should still be able to send through the account (although you say you are running a business…if AOL is like other ISPs they probably have a limit on the amount of email you can send over their server).

But on the other hand, if AOL is blocking it I can’t see why exactly why it is happening intermittently. OE is a fussy program, you changed the server settings, did you try taking the account out and putting it back in? Works sometimes. Do you have any firewall software on the computer?