Do you get any log entries when this behavior occurs? The event log and the IIS logs would be the place to start looking. Have a look especially at the IIS logs to see the difference between a good and a stuck message. I assume that you are just forwarding to GFI, but curiuos if you have it another way. Al _____ From: Mark Dewell [mailto:M.Dewell@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 11:52 AM To: [ExchangeList] Subject: [exchangelist] smtp receives but stops sending http://www.MSExchange.org/ Can anyone shed any light on the following behavior. We are running Exchange 2003 and during normal operation the smtp queues will be empty (apart from the occasionally message or 2 in transit). However, once or twice a week the smtp service on our front end seems to stop delivering messages, but does continue to accept them, with the result that if left unchecked we get a backlog of thousands of messages in the 'Messages pending submission' queue. To resolve this we have to restart the smtp service, which is normally not possible. So we instead have to set the service to 'disabled' and then restart the entire server. The queue contents can then be moved out to a temporary location and the smtp service restarted. If we restart without clearing the original queue contents the IIS service often crashes, but if we start up with an empty queue we can feed the backlog back into the system a thousand at a time via the pickup folder and this will successfully deliver them. So this seems to imply that it is not the queue/message content that is causing the problem. We originally saw this problem with Exchange 2000, but successive service packs and now Ex2003 have not fixed the problem. It only seems to happen at busy periods, like the Autumn term of a University. It ran without a hiccup over the summer break. We have a very fast network with several AD global catalogs available so I don't believe this to be an active directory related problem, but..... We are also running GFI MailEssentials on this server, but only since June and the problem has been occuring on and off for the last couple of years. Sophos Mail Monitor Anti-Virus also runs on this and all our other Exchange servers, but only this one front end server has the problem. Is anyone having a similar problems? Any ideas how we can investigate this further (The events logs show no errors during the time period this occurs). ---< Mark Dewell, University of East London, Dagenham, Essex, UK >--- ---< Email : M.Dewell@xxxxxxxxx >--- ---< URL : http://homepages.uel.ac.uk/1278 <http://homepages.uel.ac.uk/1278> >--- < Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty (Anne Herbert) > ------------------------------------------------------ List Archives: http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist Exchange Newsletters: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/newsletter.asp Exchange FAQ: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/larticle.asp?type=FAQ ------------------------------------------------------ Other Internet Software Marketing Sites: Leading Network Software Directory: http://www.serverfiles.com No.1 ISA Server Resource Site: http://www.isaserver.org Windows Security Resource Site: http://www.windowsecurity.com/ Network Security Library: http://www.secinf.net/ Windows 2000/NT Fax Solutions: http://www.ntfaxfaq.com ------------------------------------------------------