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HI.

There is a serios bug in MS Exchange 2003 SP2 - when sending to hosts that implement greylisting, sometimes the Exchange server fails to requeue the message and doesn't retry it.
Such messages are lost until the Exchange server administrator restarts the server or related services, then suddenly the sender users get an NDR for old emails that might have been sent several weeks ago, and/or the recipient gets an old email that was sent long ago.
You will find more technical details in the links below.

This bug was reported to MS more then a year ago, but they still haven't figured it out, and even didn't acknowledge it publicly.
This means that there are many Exchange servers out-there having this bug, and in many cases especialy small businesses, the Exchange admin isn't aware of it at all.

This is definitely a bug at the MS Exchange server side which fails to retry - it is not a bug in the greylisting receiving implementation, but as we all know any problem with email delivery affects the users at both ends, therefor it is important for you to be aware of the problem even if the problem is not at your side.
So if your users or someone at the sending side tells you about similar problems, you will have a better answer. Knowledge is power!

If you have already noticed this problem, please reply to this post, and also ask the Exchange admin at the sender side to read this post, and to read the other links below.

Please read the following links to better understand this problem:

http://groups.google.com/groups?um=1&tab...reylisting

Subject: Exchange 2003 SP2 Greylisting bug - survey
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/communi...sloc=en-us

Subject: Exchange --> Greylisting
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/new...88c4e1198f

Greylisting Problem - microsoft.public.exchange.admin | Google Groups:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft...ac14b116db

Any comments are welcome.

Yizhar Hurwitz
http://yizhar.mvps.org

Hi All,
Possible hot-fix available:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934709/en-us

The user " ozinm " is in good point of view. He has provided us with good link of http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934709/en-us. I studied the topic and solved out the issue i have been facing since January 2008.
Thanks for helping.

Regards:
Hank Freid

Hank Freid Wrote:The user " ozinm " is in good point of view. He has provided us with good link of http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934709/en-us. I studied the topic and solved out the issue i have been facing since January 2008.
Thanks for helping.

Regards:
Hank Freid

HI.

A person from MS Exchange team wrote to me that KB934709 is relevant to Windows SMTP service but not to Exchange which uses other DLL files.
However they (M$) still did not pulish anything to the public, while at least some of them are aware (but not awake...) about the problem.

My suggestion to you all is - if you are an Exchange 2003 SP2 admin, then:
Read the discussions from the links above.
Implement some or all of the workarounds discussed, and you can also install KB934709 (it will not harm) but don't assume that this is the fix.

Yizhar Hurwitz
http://yizhar.mvps.org

HI.

34 month after releasing the bug (October 2005), MS decided that it's the right time to provide a KB article about the problem, and even a hotfix.

Wow!

E-mail senders do not receive an indication that some messages have been held by Exchange Server 2003 until the SMTP service, the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service, or the Exchange server is restarted:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=950757

Yizhar Hurwitz
http://yizhar.mvps.org

Thanks Ozinm,

The link you have provided is very helpful i just checked that and there is allot of information in it.