The Malaysia Email Hosting Blog

I was talking to one of our customer of email hosting today. Apparently, she can’t receive any email to her mailbox because of accidentally turned off the ‘Save a copy after forwarding’. The mailbox supposes to forward all email received, and save a copy.
She tried without any luck after I have fixed the problem for [...]

“I tried to delete email from Outlook Express but fail. It says Messages could not be moved”

The email folder where you want to delete the email was corrupted. This happens to users with Outlook Express with many emails all kept in the Inbox, or when your PC is not formated and used for quite a while.

Outlook Express keeps all email in DBX format. This file get corupted easily. Go to the Tools > Options > Maintenance > Store Folder to know where is your DBX file. Delete the DBX, but make sure you have turn off Outlook Express and move your message to different folder. Open Outlook Express again and it will generate the new DBX. Now, move the email back to Inbox.

Hargopal wrote an insightful article on how TM’s unintelligent technical department decided to clamp down on Port 25 (the port where all StreamyX users use to send out emails).

What this means is that if you have subscribed to a Personal Streamyx account, or a Business Broadband (SOHO Package), you may experience problems with sending out emails with the default settings of port 25, especially if you are sending out emails using your own domain name.

If your customers frequently complain of not receiving your emails, this could be a tell tale sign. Users who are using their Streamyx email accounts may not be affected (example@streamyx.com) by this, since it involves emails on hosted domains (eg info@hosteddomain.com).

Personally, I experienced problems with sending out emails from my locally hosted and foreign hosted domains on port 25 and that is when I discovered this countermeasure by TM Net. In my case, my host Webserver has provided an alternative port, 587 for SMTP and this works much more reliably compared to port 25 (since TM Net is performing heavy filtering on this port). Therefore, it is advisable to contact your web host to find out if they have any alternative ports you can use for SMTP, especially if you experience slowness in sending emails.

This has caused major problems with all StreamyX users who are using email hosting services that is tied to Port 25.

I’ve got no problem with TM going about their spam-reducing activities, but heck, they shouldn’t do that on the expenses of the users email hosting services, which is causing a major customer support disaster worldwide!

TM Malaysia, practice some common sense in whatever you do!

Outlook or Outlook Express are both email clients that allow you to download your email from the mail server to your computer, instead of browsing it online using Webmail.

Email to you are stored in the mail server. Email clients connect to this mail server (we call it Incoming mail server, eg pop.emailsrvr.com) and download the email. After downloading, the email will no longer available in the mail server, unless you have enabled the option ‘Leave copy of email in mail server for xxx days’.

Sending out email works slightly different from receiving email. Theorically, you can use any outgoing mail server (or, you can call it SMTP server) to send out your email as long as it allows you to do so. That means you can switch around SMTP servers in your email clients if for some reason the one you are currently using is down.

Few things you need to understand while setting up the SMTP server in your email clients. Most SMTP mail servers require authentication. Examples:

Streamyx SMTP: smtp-proxy.tm.net.my, running on port 25
Streamyx check if you are using their broadband before allowing you to use their SMTP. Therefore, you don’t need to activate any authentication in your email clients.

1.com.my’s SMTP: smtp.emailsrvr.com, running on port 25
You need to login to use. The login info is the same as the one you use to check your email. Therefore you need to select ‘use same setting as Incoming mail server’.

Gmail SMTP: smtp.gmail.com, running on port 465
Gmail SMTP is a secure mail server. Your email client will send your composed email to Gmail SMTP using a secure connection with encryption. Again, Gmail SMTP require authentication too. Enter your Gmail login info in the Authentication settings. You need to indicate that your SMTP is running on secure connection, look for ‘This servers require a secure connection (SSL)’.

By understand how your email client works, you will have no problem to setup your Outlook or Outlook Express quick!

Few things to take note, most of email service provider use your email address as username. Also, if you have change your password (usually done via Webmail), you need to update your password in email clients too.

More tips about using Outlook Express

There have been a number of issue going on lately with the Globe Crossing backbone connectivity.

“I can’t access your Webmail, but can browse other websites…”

Apparently, customers convince such test confirm that the said Webmail is down! But, this is not always true.

It depends on the location of web servers that host the website. Your ISPs connect you to the outside world using different networks. Problem can occur to just local or international connection.

That means, if the said Webmail is hosted in overseas while customers are browsing a locally hosted website, this will create an assumption that the Webmail is down!

Solution, email servers hosted with geographically-dispersed network in both your country and overseas!

“I can browse website, but why I can’t send & receive email using my Outlook Express?”

Website runs on Port 80, different from mail server which uses port 25 or 110. Browsing website means you are downloading data. Your ISP gives you different download and upload speed, it is not the same.

Well, sending out email is different from browsing website. You upload the data (or your mail) to the mail server for delivery.

Give details. Please remember that you’re the one seeing the error and many times, you’re the only one seeing that error. Folks can’t read minds or else they would be in Vegas playing cards instead of trying to help other folks on the email support :)

We do understand how bad is, when the email is down. Few questions that I would ask as a Email Support people:

1. How do you access your email? Outlook Express or Webmail?

2. You can’t send out email, please tell us what is the error message you are seeing?

Cool down….

One of our server’s hard drive crashed yesterday. After the 10 rushing hours of restoring data and swaping server, we have finally fixed everything and ready to go, it is already late night 2am!

This can never be done without the very promptly support from our service provider, Emerge. Their 24 hours support hotline lead us to two of their very friendly technical support team, Bala and Lee. We their immediate assistant and kindest support, it is never cool inside the data centre, it is warm!