Cannot Send Mail, Multiple SMTP'S, SpamWasher & Thunderbird...

[system]

Hello,

I am having major problems sending mail. I can receive mail just fine- (in fact, Avast scans this incoming mail twice!). I have looked all over the forum, and used other suggestions and examples, by altering my Thunderbird settings, my avast.ini file configuration, etc… to no avail.

My Configuration:

Windows XP/SP2
Outpost Pro Firewall v 3.0.543.5722 (431)
Avast! version 4.6 Home (free) Build: Jul2005 (4.6.691)
Webroot Spy Sweeper v 4.5.5 (build 607)
PanicWare SpamWasher v 2.0.1000
ReadNotify ActiveTracker General Purpose Email Plug In v 3.2 w/Webmail Update
Mozilla Thunderbird v 1.0.7 (20050923)
Internet Connex: Sattelite/Vonage Motorolla Adapter

Here goes. I had everything on system, and previously used Panda Titanium 2004 antivirus. Unfortunately, there was an upgrade, Panda Titanium 2005, which included a firewall. Even though I disabled this feature in the update Panda version, it still wreaked havoc, and wouldn’t play nicely with Outpost-(I wouldn’t dream of switching from Outpost to another firewall). So I read on the Outpost forum that Avast! plays nicely with Outpost, so I downloaded Avast!.

Everything is great. It works well with all of my other security programs, etc… EXCEPT- No trouble receiving POP3 mail. In fact, I receive POP3 through SpamWasher, then download to Thunderbird, and Avast! scans each mail twice! (Not an issue for me!) BUT- I cannot send mail, at all, what so ever. I’ve been having to manually log in to webmail to send messages. A big pain, seeing as though I have 6 different SMTP accounts to send from.

Client Configuration:

POP3: I have SpamWasher set up to be the incoming for POP3, port 110. I have Thunderbird set up to retrieve POP3 from localhost, port 110. On some of my accounts, the email address IS the username, so no adjustments there. On those POP3 accounts where the username is just that, only a user name, I appended them as such: username#emailserver.com. This works just fine, and Avast! works wonderful here.

SMTP: Before installing Avast, I left Thunderbird configured to retrieve SMTP normally right from the client. In order for my ReadNotify software to work, I had to install this once TBird was properly configured normally. Once ReadNotify was installed, it would make necessary “localhost” adjustments to the SMTP settings in TBird. But, since installing Avast!, sending email wouldn’t work anymore. So, I uninstalled ReadNotify, and reconfigured TBird to the original SMTP server settings. To no avail, still couldn’t send any email.

SMTP Accounts:

Provider 1: 3 accounts with different log ins
Provider 1 setttings: mail.t6b.com (for POP3 or SMTP); username#mail.t6b.com; password; port 25

Provider 2: 2 accounts with different log ins (THIS IS MY DEFAULT TBIRD SMTP ACCOUNT)
Provider 2 settings: smtp.mail.wowway.com; username#smtp.mail.wowway.com; password; port25

Provider 3: 1 account with log in
Provider 3 settings: smtpout.secureserver.net; username= email address; password; port 80 or 3535

I checked all of the server’s settings, and none show that authentication is required, just log in.

Just so you know, I know there are posts all over the place regarding SMTP settings and Avast!. I have investigated all I could find and access through this forum, and have now made & played with various configurations with TBird and avast.ini. I have gotten 1 of the SMTP providers to work now, but not the other 2. The provider I have working is Provider #1, as listed in the above SMTP Accounts listed. None of the other providers work.

According to other posts on the forum, I did make the following configuration changes to the avast.ini file, to no avail. So then, I even went back into add/remove programs, reinstalled the original configs, and here are the current-(non-working) settings which are now configured as follows:

[MailScanner]
PopListen=110
SmtpListen=25
ImapListen=143
NntpListen=119
UseDefaultSmtp=0
AutoSetProtection=0
PopRedirectPort=110
SmtpRedirectPort=25
ImapRedirectPort=143
NntpRedirectPort=119
IgnoreAddress=0
IgnoreLocalhost=1
AutoRedirect=1
StartPop=0
StartSmtp=0
StartImap=0
StartNntp=0
TranslateAddress=0
Log=1
ShowTrayIcon=1

Ulimately, the way my programs should be working, is that when I send an email through TBird, it should be scanned through Avast!, and then go out through ReadNotify.

The next question would be could my firewall be an issue here.

Here is the firewall log result from the Email History sending from the Provider 1 account that DOES work:

mail.t6b.com TCP OUT SMTP local port: 2584
*Allow Outbound TCP to 25 00:00:19 85 Bytes/s 831 Bytes 792 Bytes

Here is one of the firewall log results from the Email History sending from Provider #2 that DOESN’T work-(THIS IS MY DEFAULT SMTP TBIRD ACCOUNT) :

thunderbird.exe smtp.mail.wowway.com TCP OUT SMTP local port: 2583
*Allow Outbound TCP to 25 00:00:17 23 Bytes/s 138 Bytes 259 Bytes

Here are the allowed connections in my firewall log, in conjunction with the above logged SMTP connections:

Provider #1 that does work:

OUT TCP mail.t6b.com SMTP 2584 *Allow Outbound TCP to 25 00:00:19 85 Bytes/s 831 Bytes 792 Bytes

Provider #2 that doesn’t work-(MY DEFAULT TBIRD ACCOUNT):

OUT TCP smtp.mail.wowway.com SMTP 2583 *Allow Outbound TCP to 25 00:00:17 23 Bytes/s 138 Bytes 259 Bytes

Also, I noticed that after messing around with the settings, Avast mail scanner isn’t scanning any outbound. It used to try when I was messing around with configurations, but I still wasn’t able to send any mail.

I am hoping that someone has the knowledge to help me properly configure these settings, so that I may use all of these programs that I pay for and employ. I really like Avast!, and would like to eventually purchase the Pro addition, but given my current issues, if I am unable to resolve them, I’ll have to look elsewhere for another anti-virus software, which I really am adamant about doing!

I am on my last thread of hope, posting to this forum. Hope someone can be of help, and I’m sorry if this is all “too much information”! I just wanted to be sure that whoever helps has a detailed picture to better understand what may be going on here.

Thank you so much for any time and assistance you can give to my issue!

Sincerely,

The Moonchild

[system]

Actually, I now noticed that with the changes that I had tried to implement, I am still receiving POP3, but the email scanner isn’t scanning POP3.

Also, as an after thought, my SpamWasher program also has SMTP settings, which I have configured for my email servers, which allows me to “bounce” back messages from Spammers, to try to indicate to them that my email address(es) aren’t “valid”.

This feature seems to work through SpamWasher, to the best of my knowledge. So it seems I am able to bounce back SMTP messages through SpamWasher. I don’t know if this sheds any more light on my subject or not! Just thought I’d P.S this!

[lisandro.carmona]

Moonchild, maybe you can change following line to the [MailScanner] section of \data\avast4.ini:

Log=20

Then generate some traffic, simulate the problem (i.e. force the avast mail scanner to time out by sending an email with attachment) and then post here the contents of the file \data\log\aswMaiSv.log

Or, send an email or IM to Vojtech.
Maybe he can help you better.

More details: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=12234.msg103474#msg103474

[DavidR]

1. The duplicate scanning was due to avast scanning the content into SpamWasher and then before it gets into your inbox. You need to get the two in line or exclude the SpamWasher so email content is only scanned once. I have no idea how SpamWasher works so I can’t really suggest how to do this. There are a number of posts about avast and spamihilator, so a a forum search for that may return some information that may help.

I use MailWasher Pro and it works directly with the mail server, downloads a small part of the email to establish if it is spam (or worse), because this uses the email ports, avast used to scan that, until I excluded mailwasher.exe in the avast4.ini file from being scanned.

[MailScanner] IgnoreProcess=MailWasher.exe

If SpamWasher works in the same way direct to the email server and not in the inbox, that is an option otherwise the forum search may reveal more help.

2. I don’t recommend that you bounce spam, it is an exercise in futility:

• a. Many from email addresses are forged, so this only adds email traffic and ‘spams’ the innocent person who’s email address was harvested or extracted from an infected users addressbook.
• b. Even if it did get back to the spammers server, it either only confirms: the address exists and has an artificial bounce; or he removes the bum email from his list making it more efficient and accurate.

Yes it make make you feel good when you do it, you are fighting back against the spammer, when really he is little bothered by it. They may even benefit by having a more efficient list with no bad emails that he can sell on, so the innocent get even more spam. The best option is delete and do nothing.