To start - I'm a lawyer not a computer guy but I hate not knowing how to handle little stuff on my system so my questions may be stupid but I would appreciate help. I'm running SBS 2003 and Exchange server hosting my own email. My inbound goes through Postini. I get the following server error messages from my system. The service not starting appears to be the MTA service but I'm really not sure if that is right. It doesn't make much sense as that would seem to mean I couldn't send email. The files in the queue are outgoing from the postmaster account to spam recipients. How do I get rid of them and what causes this? I don't understand the failed connection messages and why are they critical? First Message Total auto-started services not running: 1 In normal conditions, these services should be running. For details, it is recommended that you review errors in the Event log related to the service. Second Message A large number of messages are pending in the e-mail server send queue.Verify that you have Internet connectivity. If you can view Web sites normally, contact your Internet service provider (ISP) to determine if there is a problem with their e-mail server.You can disable this alert or change its threshold by using the Change Alert Notifications task in the Server Management Monitoring and Reporting taskpad. Third Message This is an SMTP protocol error log for virtual server ID 1, connection #8715. The remote host "12.154.55.40", responded to the SMTP command "rcpt" with "551 not our customer ". The full command sent was "RCPT TO:<42anne009@attglobal.net> ". This will probably cause the connection to fail. For more information, click http://www.microsoft.com/contentredirect.asp. This is an SMTP protocol log for virtual server ID 1, connection #8403. The client at "124.11.194.193" sent a "rcpt" command, and the SMTP server responded with "550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for sseenndd0821@yahoo.com.cn ". The full command sent was "rcpt TO:<sseenndd0821@yahoo.com.cn>". This will probably cause the connection to fail. For more information, click http://www.microsoft.com/contentredirect.asp.

Well, Counselor, I think you have a couple of unrelated issues that are all happening. First, the MTA service is not necessary for Exchange Server (or SBS) 2003 so this should not need to cause you any concern. However, the 2nd and 3rd messages are a bit more cause for concern. On your SBS server, open up the Exchange System Manager program (I think that is what it is called on SBS) and navigate down to the server's Queues folder? Do you see a LOT of messages queued up for outbound delivery? I suspect that someone may have found a way to use your server as a "relay" to send hundreds (or thousands) of messages to someone else. The 3rd message indictes that your server is atttending to deliver messages that your users did not send. Since you use Postini, the ONLY SMTP servers on the Internet that should EVER connect to you are Postini's. Therefore, you should restrict your firewall so that it only accepts inbound SMTP mail from Postini's mail servers. I took a look on Postini's Web site to see if the easily published this list, but could not find anything. It looks like you will need to contact your reseller for this information. Once you have their IPs', configure your firewall to accept inbound SMTP (TCP port 25) from only their servers. This will prevent hackers/spammers/scammers from using your server as a relay point. Your server may be configured as an open relay anyway. While blocking your firewall for everyone but Postini will fix this, it does not fix the root cause. You can test your server's public IP at: http://www.abuse.net/relay.html or http://www.spamhelp.org/shopenrelay/ You can also attempt to patch this at the Exchange server by making sure that SBS does not allow open relay. Here are a couple of useful links: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324958 This particular blog entry seems to describe what you are talking about, also. http://blogs.technet.com/petergal/archive/2005/12/29/416636.aspx Hope this helps! Jim

Jim Thank you very much. I will follow the instructions and see what happens. Denis