Requested URL not found

Add 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 as your DNS under the TCP/IP setting can solve the problem immediately. The pair of IP addresses are provided by OpenDNS, a far more reliable and free DNS server.

We visited our customer this morning to do a CSI investigation on site.

Only to find out, there is an extra ‘:’ found in front of the email address used by the Sender. Looks Sender’s Outlook had appended this kidding fields into the email address after one press the Reply button.

Anyway, we are happy the problem solved :)

The Send and Receive button in my Outlook Express kept showing me a ‘Host could not be found’ error. But, the uptime report confirmed that the host pop.emailsrvr.com is up and running. So, where goes wrong?

The 'host could not be found' error in Outlook Express

The same error appeared in the web browser. I tried to access www.1.com.my but failed. It showed a ‘This webpage is not available error’. However, the uptime report is telling us that the host www.1.com.my is available! Where goes wrong again?

This webpage is not available

This is the catch:

1. Both hosts are available, but the errors show different status
2. Both error messages are returned almost immediately

The following steps are how you can fix the problem:

Go to Settings > Network Connections. Choose the active network adapter you have, and right click for Properties

Select the Properties of your active network adaptor

Select ‘Use the following DNS server addresses’. Replace them with 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. This pair of DNS servers are provided by OpenDNS, free of charge. It is far more reliable than any of your existing DNS servers, especially those from Telekom Malaysia, as well as Maxis, Digi, Timenet or Celcom wireless broadband!

The new Open DNS addresses

Hola.. done! Repair your connection, or simply restart your PC. It should work now. TM never seems to understand that they have some very serious resolving problems with their DNS servers.

It is easy to say that Jaring data centre or Streamyx broadband connection is down and causes your email problem. Isn’t that email service provider should be the best person to decide which is the best data centre for their customers?

What’s your story? Share with us by posting it as comment below.

2. Who knows, it might be some hardware failure? We used to run this very simple test- Disconnecting all PCs connecting via LAN, and connect just one PC directly to your Router. The router connects to your whatever broadband connection. In this way, you can perform a quick one-to-one test.

3. Could it be a DNS problems? By default, your router are configured with two DNS addresses, provided by your Internet Service Provider. Add third & forth DNS addresses by following the instructions on www.OpenDNS.org.

4. If download of email messages using Outlook or Outlook Express is slow, you can try to go into your Webmail and see if you can remove any huge email to make download faster.

5. Try Mailreader, as a temporarily solution to access your mailbox. Go to http://www.mailreader.com. Enter your email address as username and your POP/Incoming Mail Server Address as Mail Server. First time users need to go through some extra settings.

6. Quick check, make sure none of you are using smtp-proxy.tm.net.my in any setting under your email client such as Outlook or Outlook Express. If yes, ask your email service provider for your SMTP server address that didnt run on Port 25. Replace it.

7. This sounds silly, but who cares. Use Firefox web browser than Internet Explore (IE). You can download it here http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html. It loads your webmail faster.

8. The last killing resort, forward a copy of your email to your Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc. I have done this too, to make sure when things go wrong, I have a place to get a copy of my email too, free of charge. The forwarding setting can be done in your Webmail (Settings> Incoming Mail> Forwarding). Make sure you have checked ‘keep a copy of message after forward…’.

An example of a typical technical support request I have received from my customers. If this is not finding a needle in the sea, it is close :)

1. ‘One out of 5 users’, good sign to show that the mail server is working. Reason, if a mail server is down, it will affect all 5 users than just one.

2. Oh ya, since she mentioned about the word ‘receive selected email’, this further narrow down the mail server to the Incoming mail server or POP3 server only, instead of Outgoing mail server or SMTP server.

3. ‘…selected email especially which sent from Vietnam’. Hmm, this can be a wee bit tough. We need to know what are those email addresses? From there, we can tell if the Sender email address is bad, or at least to figure out some hint from the Sender’s mail server.

4. ‘…one of the users’. This is another one, we need to know exactly who are this user? Having the email address of this user with problem, allow us to check his/her Spam box to find any trapped email, or to check if there are any unaware forwarding rules, filtering rules or even a black list related to Sender email address.

5. Is the user using Webmail, or any email client such as Outlook or Outlook Express? This is important to us!

6. Is sender getting any Returned Mail. It has useful information to tell where goes wrong.

7. Vietnam, thanks. This is somehow useful, thanks :)

8. ‘Pls help to solve this problem asap’. We would love to help diving into the sea and fight with the great white shark to get the needle for you. See, every email problem can be solved, so don’t worry. We just need some info from you and some passion and patience from us, that is about it :)

‘MAILER-DAEMON (Mail Delivery System)…’

Never ignore any message from the above sender. The message has the crucial information about the error, and in most case, it provides your technical support team a way to debug and rectify the problem.

Post your error message here, I will try to help :)

Read receipt feature found in Outlook Express

This is my reply:

“Apparently, you have checked both the Deliver & Read Receipt features when sending out your message. I must admit, they are obsolete and can be confusing sometimes. This is the reason why you can’t find the same features in Gmail, and in our Webmail as well.

A Deliver Receipt give the sense to sender that your email has reached the mailbox of your recipient. But, in actual fact, it is not. It arguely means the email reached the recipient’s mail server, and thing can still go wrong. To further confuse the situation, not all server will trigger a Deliver Receipt, again this is not a full proof features.

The Read Receipt is more or less having the same problem. Your recipient will be prompted to send a Read Receipt when they open your email. But this happen to Outlook and some email clients only, not on those with Gmail or many of other webmail users. Also, Outlook client can manually turn off this features and you will never know if they have read the message.

I am sorry to say that, I would suggest you to not using the two features.

Instead, if a message is not delivered, you should get a returned mail. Without a returned mail, your email should go through and reach your recipient’s mail server. Assuming no problem on their mail server, your recipient should most probably receive your message.”

She tried without any luck after I have fixed the problem for her. That is when she asked me again and I tried, it works smoothly. Couldn’t believe it, she tried again and this time everything works fine.

‘Can I have a picture of you?’ She asked

Astonished at first, but I am soon to find out that she teasingly want to have my picture put on their PCs to serve as ‘門神’. Ancient Chinese way of protecting the safety of home.

門神是中國住宅和佛教道教寺廟大門處的神像，亦見於朝鮮、越南，主要貼在大門或後門，佛教道教寺廟也會在山門處設有門神塑像。門神是木版年畫的主要題材之一。民間傳說最廣的是左右門分別貼的是秦瓊與敬德（尉遲恭），單門則貼的是魏徵或是鍾馗。

“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.