Can't send email

[tberman333]

I am unable to send email unless I "Stop On-Access Protection" in Avast.

I get a message that says "Unable to connect to SMTP server".

I run WinXP (with the XP firewall)
Thuderbird is my email client.
My ISP is Comcast, but my email is actaully though my hosting company (Go Daddy).  I mention this, because on my wife's PC, she is able to send email (her email is through AOL , but also used Thuderbird as a client).

I have read though the forums and tried a few things that were suggested here but nothing has worked...

I first thought it was because Port 25 was being blocked, so I changed my SMTP "redirect" to 80 (that is the same as the default, so I assume that would mean it is not being redirected at all).  Also, I have tried to uncheck the Scan Outbound Mail option. 

I have also tried to either Pause or Stop the Internet Mail provider.  None of those things seem to work... The only way I can send email is to Stop On-Access Protection.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[DavidR]

I think you are getting somehow confused between providers as the redirect port 80 relates to the Web Shield provider, so if you change the tbird account smtp port to 80 that would stop any connection to the smtp server.

If you changed the Redirect smtp port to 80 (omitting the default port 25 redirect) then avast wouldn't redirect port 25 to the Internet Mail proxy, so it shouldn't be monitoring/affecting your outbound smtp mail. I have included another port in my Redirect as this is a back-up port used by my domain host.

How do you view your email, using tbird, AOL email client or webmail through your browser ?

All I can suggest is settings back to the defaults and check out and answer the questions for the usual suspects below (I know you say you have tried a few things, but I don't know what you have tried.

What is your firewall ?
Does it allow ashMaiSv.exe internet access ?
- If it does delete the entry for it and this will force the firewall to ask permission again when you try to collect your email.

[tberman333]

My firewall is the Windows XP firewall and I have determined that the firewall is not causing the issue... I turned off the firewall and was still unable to send email.

Also, to be clear, I change the SMTP redirect from 25 to 80 because Go Daddy used Port 80 for SMTP.

I use tbird for all email operations on (viewing and sending).  I am able to receive email without a problem, but when I try to send I always get the "Unable to connect to SMTP server" error message.

I have changed all settings back to defaults at this point.  If anyone has any suggestions that may work it would be much appreciated.  I could also provide more information if that is needed.

[tberman333]

I figured out the problem... I started stopping one service at a time until I was able to send email.

The service that was preventing my email from sending was the "Web Shield".  The problem was the "Redirected HTTP Port(s)" was set to 80.  I think this conflicted with my SMTP Port also being set to 80.  I change the "Redirected HTTP Port(s)" to a random number and now all is working fine.

I just thought I would post this hear in case someone else has a similar issue (maybe this can help).

[DavidR]

This is crazy on the part of GoDaddy to use the standard http port 80 for pop3/smtp email protocol. The web Shields task is to monitor port 80 for HTTP protocol traffic, so it does what is expected of it and intercepts port 80 traffic, but because it receives smtp protocol it can't handle it.

Port 80 is the standard HTTP port.

On a Web server or Hypertext Transfer Protocol daemon, port 80 is the port that the server "listens to" or expects to receive from a Web client, assuming that the default was taken when the server was configured or set up. A port can be specified in the range from 0-65536 on the NCSA server. However, the server administrator configures the server so that only one port number can be recognized.
By default, the port number for a Web server is 80. Experimental services may sometimes be run at port 8080.

All isn't working fine, if you change the Web Shield HTTP redirect to a random number it is no longer giving any protection, you might as well have disabled it.

Port 26 is a commonly used alternative SMTP port, so why GoDaddy complicated matters by insisting on an HTTP port number is beyond me, when it has 65000+ others to choose from.

[tberman333]

Well... I did some more searching on Go Daddy's support page and they actually allow you to choose from Port 25, 80 and 3535 (but for some reason the client specific instructions on their site say it must be set to 80).

Anyway, I changed my email client SMTP port to 25 and the Web Shield HTTP redirect back to 80 and all is working.

So, Go Daddy is not really that strange to offer alternative Ports (I think they do it in case your ISP blocks 25), they should just update the client specific instructions to tell you that there are alternatives!

Anyway, if anyone else uses Go Daddy and has problems, hopefully this Topic will help them!

[DavidR]

Not strange to offer alternative ports, wise in fact but to use port 80 as an alternative is ill advised IMHO.

However, the good news is that it is resolved now and as you say may help others.

Welcome to the forums.

[alanrf]

Trying to run an SMTP session over port 80 must have confused the heck out of the WebShield.  I never heard anyone ever using port 80 for SMTP before.

I think it could be done with exclusions in the Webshield for the mail client, but it makes more sense to do the thing properly and use port 25. 

I was a bit surprised by the news of GoDaddy and port 80 - I was working with a GoDaddy user who has business accounts hosted by them in another forum recently and he was using port 25 for his SMTP connections.   We'll have to add this one to the group memory.  It is bound to come up again.

[alanrf]

This issue with avast was just raised in the Thunderbird support forum.  Here is my post from there:

I just talked to GoDaddy and looked at their recommendations. Their online pages suggest either port 80 or port 3535 (and they will tell you port 25 also but that is not shown in their online pages).

I can go into more details in the avast forum if you wish, but the best choice for you with avast will, I believe, be port 3535.

It looks to me as though GoDaddy has a secure connection server SMTP that is being advised to their users. 

So, as we have discussed here before, there will be problems if we advise GoDaddy users to use port 25 because avast mail scanning outbound assumes that port 25 is not used (per "unofficial" standards - or just plain standard use if you prefer) for secure connections. 

So for anyone else comng down this path ... for GoDaddy SMTP use port 3535.

Why not use port 80?

As I mentioned before I think that the port 80 connection could be made to work by excluding the name of the mail client in the Webshield.  This is a very poor idea because most email today contains html that is rendered within the mail client and pulls in a lot of stuff by also going out on port 80 connections to web servers to get it.  If the mail client is excluded from the Webshield then those http transfers by the mail client will not be scanned for threatening content.