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Troubleshooting

This section provides troubleshooting information for senders who are having trouble reaching Windows Live Hotmail users by e-mail. If you are a Windows Live Hotmail user looking for support with your account, please visit our end user support page or FAQ.

Before trying any of these troubleshooting options, make sure that your e-mail adheres to our guidelines.

Are you running Anti-Virus software?

Some of the deliverability issues are the result of sender-based software configurations. If you are running anti-virus software on your firewall or SMTP server, check for the setting “Internet E-mail Auto Protect” or “Internet E-mail Protection.” If this setting is enabled, disable it and try sending a test message to our servers again.

If you are currently running Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 9.x on your server, please review the following article from Symantec Support:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-security.nsf/docid/2004061009504348?Open&src=w

Confirm that your DNS is set-up correctly

Try connecting to mail.hotmail.com via port 25. If you are unable to connect, then attempt to telnet over port 25 directly to our e-mail servers (MTAs). You can find the current list of our MTAs by querying “nslookup –q=mx hotmail.com” from a command prompt (this should work in a variety of Operating Systems). Currently, the addresses for these servers are mx1.hotmail.com, mx2.hotmail.com, mx3.hotmail.com and mx4.hotmail.com. If that doesn’t work, try connecting directly to the IPs. If you are able to connect directly to the IP and not mail.hotmail.com, then it is likely there is an issue with your DNS server. You may be able to confirm this by visiting www.dnsreport.com to identify and resolve DNS or e-mail delivery problems with your domain.

Occasionally, some of the IPs in our MX record may be out of service. If you are connecting to one of these IPs your connection may timeout. Make sure you test all of our published IPs. You may also configure your outbound e-mail server to do a round-robin DNS lookup for hotmail.com.

Are you advertising yourself as a non-routable IP?

We may not accept e-mail from senders who fail a reverse-DNS lookup. In some cases legitimate senders advertise themselves incorrectly as a non-internet routable IP when attempting to open a connection to Hotmail. IP addresses that are reserved for private (non-routable) networking are 192.168.0.0/16, 10.0.0.0/8, and 172.16.0.0/11 (or 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255, 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255, 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255). The most common private network is 192.168.0.0.

Sender services, tools, and issue submission

We have developed some tools and services which will give you more information about how our users are rating your e-mail. These services have been tailored for senders and for ISPs. To learn more about the Sender and ISP Services, go here.

If your e-mail complies with our service guidelines and you are still experiencing e-mail delivery problems that are not addressed in our FAQ, click here to contact support.

Note: Deliverability issues submitted using this form should only be related to the Windows Live Hotmail system, including any address @msn.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com. Please submit the answers in English. We will do our best to help you troubleshoot your issue. However, submitting this information does not guarantee that any message you send to users of the Windows Live Hotmail services will be delivered.