An odd Network Annoyance just got more Annoying

CLEVER_LOGIN_NAME · #1 (**permalink**) 11-09-2004, 03:18 PM

I have an XP peer to peer network at work using Outlook (not Express) for our email. A few times a day Outlook will popup a "password request" from my ISP. Problem is, if I’m not sitting at my desk to click “OK” no-one can email out

It wasn’t such a big deal until I upgraded all our computers to XP Service Pack 2. Now that I’ve installed SP 2, Norton Anti-virus/firewall is giving my users an error message that the “outgoing email server can not be found”. Oddly enough the email still goes through, but my users still come to me an claim that the sky has just fallen in their office and the email system is screwed up and I’ve ripped a hole in time and space and etc. etc. etc.

I’ve spoken several times with the ISP (they also are the phone company) they’ve tested my DSL line ON SITE, and they say it must be something wrong within my network.

Does anyone have any flipping clue why this could be happening?

Thanks in advance

DJNafey · #2 (**permalink**) 21-09-2004, 12:06 PM

Have you disabled the Windows personal firewall on each XP SP2 client?

CLEVER_LOGIN_NAME · #3 (**permalink**) 22-09-2004, 01:08 AM

Yes they are all tuned off in the Firewall "General" Tab.

Could the Hardware Router/Firewall and Norton be getting in the way of each other? If this helps any, my incoming email account is totally different company (domain name) from that of my outgoing email account (the ISP). My incoming email account has never seemed to have any trouble. Not that I would easily be able to tell, unless I just stopped receiving emails. OR could bad LAN wiring be causing excessive packet drop, and the ISP is droping my automated email imput?

*sigh* I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I just set up the Peer to Peer poorly.

Are there any good check lists or tools for a quality peer to peer setup? And by good I mean free.

I would really appreciate any advice for streamlining a peer or peer LAN.

DJNafey · #4 (**permalink**) 22-09-2004, 11:27 PM

Aha! Was just thinking over the significance of your outgoing mail being a different ISP / domain. I've seen problems several times before in Outlook Express on my customer's PCs (and even at the office using Exchange Server) where incoming mail works OK but outgoing mail doesn't or vice versa. It's almost always down to authentication and, as you've just installed the new high-security SP2, authentication could be where it's now falling over.

The most memorable time that I had a problem with outgoing mail on Exchange Server was when the ISP decided to change the address of their SMTP server and not tell me! Could this have happened to you? You'd never know until you phone them if your ISP is as bad as mine

If you're using standard CAT5 / CAT5e cabling, I can't see that you could set it up so badly that it would have such a poor signal as to keep dropping packets and stop working.

Here's my checklist for this scenario:

1. Is my version of Outlook compatible with XP SP2?
2. Is my firewall compatible with XP SP2?
3. Is the SMTP server address (e.g. smtp.mail.ispname.com) still correct? Do they now have a different server for XP SP2 users?!
4. Have I messed about with the outgoing mail settings for username, secure password authentication, etc? Should I?!
5. Can I connect one of the XP clients to the "dirty" side of the firewall and try it?
6. If I get really stuck, could I uninstall SP2 from one of the clients and try it again?

Let us know if any of those ideas help