Cannot connect to webmail site unless logged in as an administrator

Question

I have new dell pc, with: windows xp, norton internet security 2006, IE6.  My internet connection is direct from my pc, but my pc is also networked on a lan.   When logged in as the pc administrator, I can access all required web sites.   When logged in as a LAN user (i.e. a user defined for the lan's domain, not an administrator on the lan), I can access all required web sites except a specific webmail site.  This site has address format 'http://mail.abc.com:nnnn'.  I get the 'The page cannot be displayed' page.  Yet I can access another webmail site where the format does not include a port specification i.e. does not have the 'nnnn' part.  So, I wonder if the problem is to do with the port.  For the two webmail sites, the first page to be presented is the user/password login page.   When logged in as a LAN user, but this time as an administrator on the lan, I can access all required web sites, including this specific webmail site.   My previous pc is: windows xp, norton internet security 2004, IE6.  I do not have this problem with it.  I can access the webmail site when logged in as the ordinary lan user.   Although it could be argued that the evidence points to differences between norton 2004 and 2006, I have not been able to identify any setting that is relevent.  Remember that it all works ok when logged in as Administrator.   So, the evidence also points to it being a problem arising from some windows xp privilege, something to do with ports.    I would be grateful for any suggestions.  Thank you.

tgsmith · Answer

ThirtyTwo,

Yep. You're on the right track. Try this. Log in as LAN user. Open Internet Explorer. Type http://www.microsoft.com:80. Click Go. Do this twice. Do you get Microsoft.com home page each time? If so, type https://www.microsoft.com:443. Click Go. Do this twice. Do you get Microsoft.com home page each time? If not, ports are blocked.

Now do the same for your http://mail.abc.com:nnnn address. If you get the "page cannot be displayed" message, you will need to open the port. While in Internet Explorer, click on Tools|Internet Options. Click on Connections tab. Click on LAN settings. Check Proxy server box. Click on Advanced. For HTTP enter http://mail.abc.com . For Port to use enter the nnnn value. For Secure enter https://mail.abc.com. For secure Port number you will have to get that from System administrator.

In some cases, you can simply add the mail server address to the Secure sites list on the Security page of Internet Options. Check your e-mail help desk. Oh, and you did mean mail.abc.com and not mail.acb.com which is a Spanish web-mail server.

Tony

ThirtyTwo · Answer

Thanks Tony for your response.

1. http://www.microsoft.com:80, yes, get home page

http://www.microsoft.com:443, no, page cannot be displayed

2. I tried the lan settings, proxy server, advanced, entered HTTP line, did not enter Secure line because I do not have secure port number. I am the system administrator. Anyway, what I did enter made no difference. It is important to note that my connection to the internet is not a lan connection i.e. my pc is directly cabled to the router. I can do things like look at the NIS logs when I do successfully connect to the site as Administrator, to note the ports used on my pc.

3. I tried adding the mail server address (http://mail.abc.com:nnnn) as a site in the Trusted Zone as you also mentioned - BTW I had to switch off server verification (https) to do this. However, the port id was removed automatically from the address when it was placed in the web sites list, so it could then never match the site I actually wanted.

'abc.com' is of course just for descriptive purposes; it is not the actual site. I did not know that mail.acb.com is a Spanish webmail server - you can never be too careful!.

So, after all that, I don't know if the problem is any clearer. Again, I would be grateful for any assistance with this. Thank you.

tgsmith · Answer

ThirtyTwo, OK.  Please note: the 's' in the address below. The secure site test is https://www.microsoft.com:443   While you're doing that, let me do a little research. Tony

ThirtyTwo · Answer

Tony

Sorry about the mis-read of the address. 'https://www.microsoft.com:443' DOES get me the microsoft home page each time. I have been accessing other secure web sites (i.e. https types) no problem, and a mail web site that I login to and a banking site that I log in to - none of them require a speficic port id of course. Still have the problem with the specific mail site. Thank you.

tgsmith · Answer

ThirtyTwo,

I've been reviewing my notes on a Linksys (Cisco) router/firewall used by a corporate customer. Lan users were unable to receive webmail because the MTU value in the Firewall was set to 1500. I had to change this value to 1492 to allow owner to access his personal MSN webmail account. Also, I assume you set up the user's webmail account as POP3. Under Advanced settings on the mail.abc.com account have you changed port from defaults of 25 for POP3 and 110 for SMTP?

Have you temporarily given the user administrator rights to see if that makes a difference accessing the mail.abc.com website? If that allows access, then we know that the problem lies in the user privileges area.

Tony

ThirtyTwo · Answer

Ok, Tony, thanks for your efforts so far.  I have explored rights as follows.   For our purposes, the hardware configuration is simple: my win xp pc and a win2k3 server, with the lan domain named as say xyz.abc.com.   My ordinary user login, for lan domain access, is say ' jack@xyz.abc.com' - cannot access mail site.  Jack is only defined for the lan domain, he is not defined directly on the pc. Local pc administrator login, to local pc domain, is say 'Administrator' - can access mail site. Lan domain administrator is say 'Administrator@xyz.abc.com' - can access mail site.   I modified the properties of jack on the lan server Active Directory Users, so as to add 'Domain Admins' to jack's Member Of list.  Now when jack logs in, he CAN access the mail site.  I suppose this is not surprising, since there must be some rights that the domain Administrator has that are critical to the access.  I did try adding 'Administrators' to jack's Member Of list but that did not make any difference to the access.  It is 'Domain Admins' that mattered.  This is not a solution, since I do not want to be logged in as such a powerful user for my normal work.   Of course, we must not forget that the local pc Administrator can access the site, and he is simply a member of Administrators.   I hope the above clarifies the problem somewhat.  Thank you.   BTW, jack, the ordinary user without domain admins rights, can access the www.abc.com site on the internet and can login to the manager system for that site on the internet e.g. www.abc.com/mngr.

tgsmith · Answer

ThirtyTwo, Ok.  Jack, the LAN domain user, gets to the Webmail login page but it rejects his user name and password.  Am I correct?  Don't know how your Webmail server logins are set up, but I do know that some Webmail servers require the login to be in the following format:   domain/username  or domain/username@abc.com.  For example:  To get MSN e-mail through Outlook Express the user name must be entered as MSN/username@msn.com.  Since I don't know exactly how your LAN domain and Webmail server domain are setup, I would suggest you try logging in as xyz/jack or abc/jack@abc.com  or xyz/jack@abc.com   or xyz.abc.com/jack.  Note that sometimes the domain names are case sensitive in this context. Tony

ThirtyTwo · Answer

No, sorry Tony. When I say 'cannot access mail' I mean that jack gets 'The page cannot be displayed', as my earlier posts stated.

I'm afraid it's not so simple as how to correctly enter the username and password.

Could it be to do with access to ports on my pc i.e. that the page from the website is trying to come in through a port that is denied for the ordinary jack but is not denied for the administrators? I have to go off and do some homework to get a command that I can use to check access to ports - something like a netstat command. For example, if my Norton Internet Security logs tell me that localhost port 1025 is used when an administrator accesses the site successfully, then can I check whether port 1025 is denied for jack.

Thank you.

Windows General

Cannot connect to webmail site unless logged in as an administrator

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