Starting today, I am unable to send email using Outlook Express. If I disable Avast through “Stop On-Access Protection” using a righ click on the Avast icon in the toolbar menu, then I can send email as before.
Is there any way to restore the ability to send email through OE without having to disable Avast first?
Don’t completely disable your protection, Terminating the Internet Mail shield would be enough, though I suspect the firewall is your issue.
Firewall is ZoneAlarm, access is allowed for ashMaiSv.exe, entry deleted, permission asked upon reboot, but still cannot send email.
If I pause Internet Mail through the Avast icon in the tray, I cannot send email, but if I end Internet Mail, I can send mail.
Something Avast did with the latest update caused this change, because it worked fine up to today.
Pause isn’t enough as traffic still passes through the proxy, you have to terminate as I mentioned for it to bypass the proxy.
Please post the full error text from OE ?
What latest update there hasn’t been a program update in 4.8 for some time and a simple VPS update wouldn’t have this impact ?
What is your Operating System ?
Error message:
The server does not support a SSL connection. Account: ‘mrpotatoheadd’, Server: ‘smtp.live.com’, Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: ‘250 OK’, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): Yes, Server Error: 250, Error Number: 0x800CCC7D
By “update”, I meant the daily automatic update, as I couldn’t figure out why it worked fine up until today.
OS = WinXP
OK, avast 4.8 doesn’t support SSL secure encrypted connections.
It would normally simply ignore SSL connections:
Has this ever worked sending email with avast enabled ?
What is your ISP ?
Has this ever worked sending email with avast enabled ?
Yes, up until this morning.
What is your ISP ?
Qwest/MSN
So what changed ?
as this OE error says you are trying to connect using SSL and avast 4.8 has never been able to connect to SSL.
What about questions 1 & 2.
Check your email account settings (tools, accounts, right click on the problem account, properties, Advanced tab) in OE and ensure that the This server requires a secure connection (SSL) is unchecked, see image. See if that works.
Error message w/
This server requires a secure connection (SSL) checked:
The server does not support a SSL connection. Account: ‘mrpotatoheadd’, Server: ‘smtp.live.com’, Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: ‘250 OK’, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): Yes, Server Error: 250, Error Number: 0x800CCC7D
Error message w/
This server requires a secure connection (SSL) unchecked
The message could not be sent because the server rejected the sender’s e-mail address. The sender’s e-mail address was ‘mrpotatoheadd@msn.com’. Subject ‘test’, Account: ‘mrpotatoheadd’, Server: ‘smtp.live.com’, Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: ‘530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first’, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 530, Error Number: 0x800CCC78
Questions:
1. Have you added a secure port number to the redirect ports ?
Not since setting up the account as instructed by my ISP.
2. or you are using port 25 and have ticked the SSL required option ?
Yes.
In which case, you’ve guessed it would fail.
It’s failing now, but that just started today.
Q1 is related to changing the redirects in the avast Internet Mail provider,
Q2 Then uncheck that option as that is what is making it fail, avast 4.8 can’t handle SSL connections.
So something changed as there is no way avast could have previously handled SSL connections if this option had been checked. As avast can’t issue a STARTTLS command
So if your ISP now requires SSL on port 25 this will never work in 4.8 without the use of a third party interface like STunnel. You could elect not to scan outbound email, but that I feel leaves you at risk of your system sending out spam, etc. if an undetected trojan spambot is on your system.
Your other option is to install avast 5.0 (which is able to handle SSL) over the top of 4.8, it preserves your registration key and removes 4.8 in the process. You would still need to uncheck the SSL option in the OE account settings, avast should then be able to detect if SSL is supported and after scanning issue the STARTTLS command send the email.
Ok- I installed 5.0. With SSL enabled, I can send email, but when I uncheck the SSL box, I can’t.
What’s the downside of using 5.0 with the SSL box checked?
I take it you mean unchecking the SSL box in OE accounts settings ?
I’m having a real hard time getting a handle on this one (so I don’t know what it is doing to you) and it stems from live.com and its non-standard use of port 25 for SSL, when that port is normally for unencrypted smtp traffic (which is what avast would be expecting on that port).
There are specific ports allocated for SSL traffic in Outlook/Express it is 465. I don’t know if this will work but you could try port 465 in the OE account settings and uncheck the SSL option and see if that gets through.
It is a little after 3a.m. here and I have to call it a night for now, so if with the SSL option in OE checked it works, I would leave it like that for now. Perhaps try the port 465 without SSL checked and see how that goes with the fall-back of port 25 with SSL.
“I take it you mean unchecking the SSL box in OE accounts settings ?”
Yes, that’s right. Next, I tried this:
you could try port 465 in the OE account settings and uncheck the SSL option
and got this error message:
Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible causes for this include server problems, network problems, or a long period of inactivity. Account: ‘mrpotatoheadd’, Server: ‘smtp.live.com’, Protocol: SMTP, Port: 465, Secure(SSL): No, Error Number: 0x800CCC0F
Don’t know what to think- thanks for your help.
If SSL is on in OE, avast cannot scan mail. If you want your outgoing mail scanned, set
SSL=off and port=25 in OE and
Encryption=TLS and port=25 or 587 in Mail Shield Settings/SSL Accounts.
Hi vojtech-
I tried that, and got this error message:
The message could not be sent because the server rejected the sender’s e-mail address. The sender’s e-mail address was ‘mrpotatoheadd@msn.com’. Subject ‘test’, Account: ‘pop3.live.com’, Server: ‘smtp.live.com’, Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: ‘530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first’, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 530, Error Number: 0x800CCC78
When I went back and rechecked the SSL box for Port 25 (outgoing mail), the email was sent without the error message.
Sorry I can’t explain myself any better- this is nearly all greek to me. All I know is that everything worked fine one day and then didn’t on the next.
Is the Mail Shield running ?
Is your virus db up-to-date (see Maintenance/Update) ?
Is this issue resolved? Is there a simple solution other than removing AVAST?
My problem appears to be the same: could no longer send e-mail via smtp.live.com starting January 21. Software: Outlook 2002 on Windows XP. AVAST was updated and PC restarted 6 hours ago. My laptop with Vista and without AVAST is still sending and receiving using Outlook to access the same MSN.com account.
Was able to run successful tests of the e-mail account settings in Outlook with the following settings:
Outgoing Server Tab
Check the box for: My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication
Select the button for : Use same settings as incoming mail server
Advanced Tab
Set Incoming server (POP3) to 995
Check the box for: This server requires SSL…
Set Outgoing server (SMTP) to 587
Check the box for: This server requires SSL…
However, going to Outlook with these settings gave:
Task ‘Microsoft Mail Server - Sending and Receiving’ reported error (0x800CCC78) : ‘Unable to send the message. Please verify the e-mail address in your account properties. The server responded: ??0 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first’
Task ‘Microsoft Mail Server - Sending’ reported error (0x800CCC7C) : ‘Your outgoing (SMTP) server requires an SSL-secured connection. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts, select View or change existing e-mail accounts, click Next, select the account, and then click Change. Click More Settings and then on the Advanced tab select This server requires an SSL-secured connection. The server responded: 530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first’
TLS does not seem appear as an option in the menus I have looked at so far in Outlook 2002.
Thanks for clarifying my options.