Expected Service Banner was not Received when Connecting

Topic Last Modified: 2009-08-18

The Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer attempts to connect to the Exchange Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server. Upon a successful connection, an SMTP Banner is returned from the SMTP server. If this banner is never returned due to a timeout or other issue, then the following message is displayed.

"Expected Service Banner was not received when connecting."

For More Information

If you're using a mail-relay or SMTP filter (available on many firewall products), you should begin your investigation with those products. Consider disabling or bypassing those products for troubleshooting purposes.

• If you aren't using a mail-relay or SMTP filter, then you might want to ensure that the appropriate process is listening on port 25 (SMTP). Use the netstat.exe utility to determine whether the appropriate service is actually listening on the port being tested using Microsoft Knowledge Base article How To Determine Which Program Uses or Blocks Specific Transmission Control Protocol Ports in Windows Server 2003.

• For Exchange Server 2003, the process name should be inetinfo.exe. For Exchange Server 2007, the process name should be edgetransport.exe.

The Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer has limited documentation currently. To improve the documentation for each of the errors you might receive, we would like to solicit additional information from the community. Use the Community Content section to post more reasons why you failed at this point. If you need technical assistance, create a post in the appropriate Exchange TechNet forum or contact support.