You do not have permission to send to this recipient.

You do not have permission to send to this recipient. Relay access denied

I had this message come up in NDR reports for every account that was trying to send email out of a local domain to an Internet email recipient (basically everyone not in your company). There are indeed many sites that present a reason and solution for this but not many at all present the obvious that may have occurred on the Exchange server that's causing this problem.

If there are many hands in the pot at an office you support and suddenly you have an Microsoft Exchange server that's acting up and now on can send email and the message is similar to the following:

You do not have permission to send to this recipient. For assistance, contact your system administrator. : Relay access denied

The relay access is denied is the key to solving this email sending problem with Exchange. This doesn't mean that the server is blacklisted or is an open relay or somehow has been compromised and this message is in fact coming from your email server. the email never makes out of the Exchange box itself. You could waste time in logs trying to determine why it's bouncing but the simple solution is that the domain users have been denied, or stated differently, have been prevented from sending email.

The solution for this is not as complicated although there could be some other problems that led someone to tamper with these settings in the first place and maybe set them improperly. In Exchange 2003, if your getting "You do not have permission to send to this recipient" "Relay access denied", check that your users have permission to send. This setting can be found in Exchange System Manager under Default SMTP virtual server. Right click the virtual server and choose properties. The click the Access tab at the top.

Then Click the Authentication button.

Then click the Users button.

Make sure you enable Relay Permission for your users. In the case where I was getting these NDRs, the Authenticated users group was displayed with the Relay Permission enabled but that wasn't enough. I added the Domain Users group and enabled relay for the group. Save your changes and give it a try.

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Computer Remote Support Software

Technology has become not just a part of everyday life, but has nearly consumed it for many people. People most especially effected by the technological infiltration of into all corners of life have been the computer desktop and server support professionals.

Once, during the earlier days of the transition from the non-tech every living to the days of all things technology, the requests for assistance with a technological hurdle by a co-worker were mostly confined to the the office. With the people who really were into technology taking on tech challenges after the work day completed. Most other folks who left the office would go home to their non high tech life styles and do whatever they did without the burden of clicking or touch screening or scrolling on any thing. Now, it's not just the techies who go home and tinker with high tech devices, it's a larger percent of the population.

It started with the home computer users then the casual surfers and now it's become an unstoppable train of technology that's effecting most aspects of life. It's not just the pros or business owners who can't stop working, it's all ages and types. It seems one of the most natural tendencies for humans is to interact with their own kind. To communicate to someone what they are thinking, what they are doing or planning to do. This need to communicate has gone far beyond the instant messengers, of which there are dozens, all fighting for users to slam ads into the faces of, to text messaging. This all doesn't stop on the computers as we know. Just recently in a big provider phone store, I noticed that there were no phones left that were a basic calling device. They all had cameras, video, Internet access, beautiful color screens, loads of graphics and capabilities. They are becoming more like mini computers. Traditional computers just have people stuck in one place mostly as they are to large to just slip into a pocket and go.

All the capabilities are now being stuffed into more mobile devices and they are selling with no slow down in sight. All to just satisfy the need to communicate in some fashion whether words or pictures, with someone else. Support, and remote support (briefly covered in a prior post), for these devices has changed also. Especially the mobile workers. They once had a computer that was connected to (I won't say dial-up Internet connections or dial-up connections directly to the office) but to the Internet and they someway connected into the company network and they did their work. Now remote or mobile workers have voice too on their desktops at home or wherever they're travelling (more stuff to support). Internet speeds provided by ISP providers are astonishing and almost imaginable in the early years of the Internet evolution.

Computer support mostly took place during regular business hours with the occasional call form the work-aholic from home. Now, support calls come from all directions and from many "regular" computer users. They are from the most simplest of problems to diagnose and troubleshoot to more complicated networking or application issues. Computer remote support software has changed too to match the needs of the mobile and remote work force. Once, a simple computer remote support application was installed on the computer that was located at home, and really didn't move, and the tech could just "dial-in" with computer support software and have remote control of the computer to fix the problem. The computer remote support software application was non-changing the connection didn't change much and was almost always available and the same. Now computer remote support has changed to include PDAs, tablet PCs, desktops of course, computers, towers, servers, dynamic IP addresses, static addressing, etc. It's like hitting a moving target as many users will even have more than one computer to work from. The days of computer remote support software just being on a single computer that didn't move and changed really slowly have evolved into a frenzy of quickly asserting where the person is and what's their connection speed and how to connect quickly.

Although many older users still refer to remotely connecting to computers as "dialing-in" it has come far from the ancient tones and flickering light of modems and dial-up connection times. especially when considering that a phone can have more bandwidth that the old computers once did.

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[Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Cannot open database '(unknown)'

I encountered as error such as this one on a customer's web server. The server is Microsoft Windows 2000 with service pack 4 and it is running IIS5. The hardware on which the IIS services run is an Dell. Since the hardware is not the issue or subject of this post I won't add much details about it. It does have some miles on it but overall it seems to be working fine.

The problem is when a web surfer hits the web server to access it's pages, the page loads but any connections the page makes to some access databases ( a real hack programmer did most of the vb-script in the pages and the access mdb file access) a variation the error:

[Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Cannot open database '(unknown)'

would display along with the page. I have been n dozens of forums and followed many of the suggestions made to correct this problem. I updates the ODBC drivers to the latest update, I've updates the MDAC, I tried rebuilding the DSN, etc..

For any of you who have come across this page while searching for a solution to this problem, check this out. I solved this by resetting the security setting on the IIS web server. The top level of the tree when looking through IIS Manager MMC Slap-in. If you mdb file is local to the server and you have already given the anonymous user all the NTFS fights it needs but you are still having this issue, then go ahead and reset the permissions on the IIS web server. That will help solve the problem. You can do it using the permissions wizard.

You may have to tweak things a bit afterwards to be familiar with some of the customer setting changes you may have made. For example the default page, if you had it set for index.html, it will be reset to default.htm. You may even encounter after you try what I just said would solve your problem, that when you try to load pages on the server through a browser you get prompted for enter a login ID and password. This is because integrated NT authentication was turned on. You would want to set that to off or on but let IIS determine the password for anonymous login.

Remote Tech Support Software

Remote tech support software is one of the most useful tools for desktop and server technicians. It allows them to get to remote computer problems quickly through the Internet. With remote tech support software, a tech can solve problems remotely over the web. Those problems are not confined to desktop, PC, computer or server problems only. Once the tech has remote control access of the remote computer they can then login to networking equipment such as routers, firewalls and managed switches to make configuration changes, upload new software or firmware and just about anything else they need to do.

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