eMail: Works On 1 PC, Fails On Other

(PeteCresswell) wrote:

I've got a hard disc monitoring utility (Hard Disc Sentinel) that
sends an email when it sees a problem.

On my Windows XP box the email part works a-ok.

But on an old Windows Home Server box using the exact same setup
it throws "connect error 10060", which - when I Google it, seems
kind of generic.

Tried the same setup, same box using Outlook Express and got a
little more detail:

"The connection to the server has failed. Account:
'mail.cotse.net', Server: 'www.cotse.net', Protocol: SMTP, Port:
25, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10060, Error Number:
0x800CCC0E".

Googling "Socket Error: 10060, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E" returned
zero hits.

Turned off the firewall, turned off the anti-virus utility...
same result.

It's got tb the system on the WSH box, right? Can anybody point
to a possible problem area?

This is the first search result I got on "0x800CCC0E".

http://internet.bell.ca/index.cfm?m...content_id934

"...firewall - it should not block Outlook Express or ports 25, 995 and 110"

For fun, if a Command Prompt is available, you can use commands like
"ping mail.cotse.net" for a basic plumbing check, or "nslookup mail.cotse.net"
and see if DNS translation works, that sort of thing. Of course, cotse.net
doesn't have to support ICMP (which is what answers the ping), and
a "super-secure" server on the Internet can have ICMP turned off
entirely. Which means no end of fun, when trying to debug the connection
(since it won't answer a ping).

nslookup mail.cotse.net

Address: 96.39.53.26

ping mail.cotse.net

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0

So at least that address works.

I could try a telnet test to port 110, like maybe

telnet mail.cotse.net 110

+OK mail.cotse.net ready.

and I seemed to get an answer. (try typing "quit" or "exit", to
end the telnet session...) My "command prompt" window did
a clear-screen, and I got one line of output from the server.
Looks basically good from here (short of logging in). You
can do that too, I would expect, using USER and PASS commands,
but at this point, I wouldn't bother. If you get the +OK
response, I take it that's proof port 110 is open enough
to reach the server.

I would expect a "server" to be bolted down more carefully
than a desktop, so getting WHS doing something like this,
wouldn't really shock me. It would just tell me I'm going
to waste the rest of the day fixing it :-)

Paul