Okay, so I’ve had this problem before. Usually, after a brief time, it goes away. Now, it’s hanging around longer and longer and getting me more and more upset.
I have a comcast email account, and I use Windows Live Mail. Currently, I can receive email just fine. Whenever I try to send any, however, I get this error:
An unknown error has occurred.
Subject ‘test’
Server Error: 421
Server Response: 421 omta03.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later
Server: ‘smtp.comcast.net’
Windows Live Mail Error ID: 0x800CCC67
Protocol: SMTP
Port: 465
Secure(SSL): Yes
Everything I can find on google says to make sure I’m using the right port (I am), that I should make sure everything is authenticated (It is), check my firewall (I don’t use one), and check that my internet is with Comcast (it is.).
Used to be I’d just log onto my email via the web, log off, wait for a bit, and everything would be fine. No go currently.
I’m really, really starting to get frustrated over this. Anyone have any solution ideas?
Are you wired or wifi?
Is it possible you’ve accidentally connected to a neighbor’s wifi? A neighbor who isn’t on Comcast?
I see one cause of that error is having too many simultaneous connections open. Have you checked to see if you have a bunch of crashed Windows Live Mail processes holding open connections? Rebooting should clear those if so.
I’m wired. I can try the reboot, but I’d love to know what the heck is making this happen. I’ve been going through this several times this month, and it’s really annoying.
Okay, yes, the reboot worked. I’d still love to know why this happens and what I can do to prevent it, as it seems to be getting more and more frequent.
Well my theory was that if Live Mail crashes for some reason, the window for it might disappear but the crashed program could still hold open a connection to the email server. If you don’t reboot often, these connections could build-up over time until you’re at Comcast’s limit and it cuts you off.
I don’t know how savvy you are with computers, but next time this comes up you could look in Task Manager and see how many copies of Live Mail are running. Or you could just try using a different email client for awhile and see if the problem occurs with it also.
Or my theory could be completely wrong and rebooting fixed it for some other reason.
I -have- had what you mentioned here happen before; that windows live mail just hasn’t shut down. Killing the process has helped in those circumstances. Unfortunately, that’s the minority of the problem. Having it again today. Still can’t tell what causes it- it always happens overnight, but I’m assuming that’s just coincidental. Time for another reboot! Yay! Grumble.
And this time the reboot didn’t help. Going to contact comcast, see if they have any ideas. With regular tech support, I’m really assuming they won’t. Fingers crossed.
Is it still happening? Works Ok here:
openssl s_client -connect smtp.comcast.net:465
... lots of debug info stripped ...
220 omta02.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast ESMTP server ready
quit
221 2.0.0 omta02.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast closing connection
421 is usually a “It’s not you, it’s me” from the remote mail server.
Note that “smtp.comcast.net” is actually a bunch of different systems behind a load balancer. I’ve landed on omta2, omta5, omta14 and omta24 during this testing. There’s no way to specify which one you want - the load balancer blocks direct connection attempts to the individual systems. Are you always getting omta2? If so, that’s odd.
Got this off the Comcast support forums:
You’re right, it’s not about your firewall or your settings. For some reason the server doesn’t want to “do business” with you. You need to call Comcast. Best be would probably be:
Customer Security Assurance at 888-565-4329. Normal business hours are 6:00 AM to 2:00 AM EST, 7 days a week.
The fact that they’re suggesting I call security assurance worries me.
The issue might be that someone with a Comcast IP address is slamming the server and Live Mail is putting temporary blocks on Comcast and you’re running in to those. You’d need to call Security Assistance because they’d be the ones in charge of the security of the IPs or chasing down whoever is doing the slamming.