In the past I’ve created batch files to do some scripted redundant scheduled task for me, usually it’s related to backing up folders or files but I have a colleague who set one up when his server reboots or specific users log on to their systems on his terminal server.  When the script is done I usually have it call and execute an email VB script letting me know the task was completed with a specific message telling me what happened.

I ran into a bit of a problem recently with  Server 2008!

In the past I’ve used these well written, simple and useful scripts from Paul Sadowski but they failed to work on Server 2008.  Here’s the link to Paul’s site, all his stuff works GREAT on Server 2003 or Windows XP and I continue using them on those systems.  –> Link.  By the way, my scripting ability is limited so I have to once again thank people like Paul and James (who’s script I ended up using) for posting their scripts online for us to use!

If I tried executing his scripts on Server 2008 I’d get weird errors like these:

• “The server rejected the sender address. The server response was 530 5.5.1:
• “Send Error: The server rejected the sender address. The server response was: 550 Access denied – Invalid HELO name (See RFC2821 4.1.1.1)”
• “550 Access denied – Invalid HELO name”
• “CDO.Message.1 error ‘80040213’ The transport failed to connect to the server”

* Also keep in mind that all these errors were not specifically from Paul’s scripts that he so kindly shared, most of them were due to me trying to edit and tweak his existing script in an attempt to eliminate the errors which I did a poor job of doing :)

I decided to start over and I stumbled upon James Koopman’s script:  http://www.jameskoopmann.com/?p=20

Thanks James for your excellent script!  You can download his script from the site above or download the script I edited and used (sensitive security information gone of course!) here –> Server 2008 compatible Email VBscript

For your information my script does NOT use a local email server, most of my problems were because I wanted to use an external email server.  The above errors are due to not having a username type in correctly, the wrong password, trying to use ssl or NTLM when you should use the “1” option for clear text.  A security wonk might balk at the idea of a clear text email authentication BUT I’d also like to remind the wonk that the script sitting on the physical server isn’t encrypted either although it’s in a safe place :).  This solution “works”, it’s not the best but it’s not the worst.

Good luck out there!