Mail to certain domains getting stuck in the queue forever!

[graphica76]

Hi,
 
I tried avast sbs for a month with no problems at all. I loved the software and bought it 3 days ago. I reinstalled the software and updated the program and virus definitions also on the same day. Since then a major problem occured. Emails going out to certain domains! They are being held up in the SBS SMTP connector in queue forever. Specifically to hotmail and some other .tv domans. The ndr looks like this:
 
graphicausa@hotmail.com on 4/20/2006 2:13 AM
  This message was rejected due to the current administrative policy by the destination server. Please retry at a later time. If that fails, contact your system administrator.
  <wepart.com #4.3.2>
 
I uninstalled the avast and the problem stopped, then reinstalled it and the problem started hapening again.
 
I checked by sending testing emails to yahoo, aol, and gmail and all worked fine. I checked my domain and it seems my dns and ptr records are unchanged and are in order. This is happening only with certain outgoing mail.
 
I also googled the above ndr and it seems like I am not alone. Even the same problem was posted on your forum with no responses for a month.
 
I am running windows 2003 sbs premium / no isa / exchange / resident / smtp set to high -
latest sp2 on the os and exchange - all running on dual pentium xeon with 4 gb of ram.
 
I also tried many solution on this forum post

(http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:R4pj8B73bXkJ:forums.msexchange.org/ultimatebb.cgi%3Fubb%3Dprint_topic%3Bf%3D18%3Bt%3D000384+antivirus+This+message+was+rejected+due+to+the+current+administrative+policy+by+the+destination+server&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1) 

with no success. I paid for a Microsoft engineer to lokk into the problem and he said it is 100% an avast problem. What do you guys think. Did anyone had this problem and fixed it??

[Vlk]

That is really strange problem indeed...

To start, it would be helpful whether it makes any difference if you stop (or pause) the avast SMTP 2000/2003 provider.

Also, is the problem perfectly reproducible? Or is it intermittent?


Thanks
Vlk

[graphica76]

Well, after a week trying to fix this issue on my own, I finally found a solution but I am not sure if it will affect the way avast works.

Here is what i did and i will appreciate if you can tell me if this action can cause viruses to slip thru:

1- I reinstalled avast
2- I went to services and made the avast mail and web scannners both not to start automatically.

Will this affect anything? It seems it is working fine. If these services are set to start automatically, then the problem reappears and mail to hotmail and certain domains never leaves the queue.

Thanks

[Vlk]

Uh, so they were set to start Automatic? That's definitely NOT the default... In fact, the Mail Scanner should *never* run if the SMTP 2000/2003 provider is present. It is known to cause these problems (it was never designed to work in server environment).