We have a notification service application, working in our development and
testing environments. Our application uses different protocols, including
SMTP for sending notifications.
Some days ago, we detected an error in the development environment, like this:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: NotificationServices
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7301
Date: 10/27/2005
Time: 10:09:33 AM
User: N/A
Computer: XXXX
Description:
<NotificationServicesEvent>
<Description>
The e-mail address or SMTP server value is not valid.
</Description>
<Context>
<EventParameters>
<Smtp server>YYYY</Smtp server>
<Message recipients>zzzz@hotmail.com;</Message recipients>
</EventParameters>

</Context>
<Description>
Exception has been thrown by the target of an
invocation.
</Description>
<Description>
The specified procedure could not be found.

</Description>
<Instance>AAAinstance</Instance>
<Component>Other</Component>
<ComponentDetails>
ComponentName: SmtpProtocol
</ComponentDetails>
<Thread>19</Thread>
</NotificationServicesEvent>

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Followed by this other error:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: NotificationServices
Event Category: None
Event ID: 6043
Date: 10/27/2005
Time: 10:09:34 AM
User: N/A
Computer: XXXX
Description:
<NotificationServicesEvent>
<Description>
A delivery failure was reported.
</Description>
<Context>
<EventParameters>
<Distributor Id>1</Distributor Id>
<Distributor Name>AAADist1</Distributor Name>
<Delivery Channel Name>EmailChannel</Delivery Channel Name>
<Notification Id>22</Notification Id>
<NotificationClassName>BBBNotifications</NotificationClassName>
<Notification Status Info>The e-mail address or SMTP server
value is not valid.
Smtp server: YYYY
Message recipients: zzzz@hotmail.com;</Notification Status Info>
<Notification Text>Notification Message Text</Notification Text>
<Notification Sent Time>10/27/2005 4:09:33 PM</Notification Sent
Time>
</EventParameters>

</Context>
<Instance>AAAinstance</Instance>
<ApplicationName>AAA</ApplicationName>
<Component>Distributor</Component>
<ComponentDetails>
DistributorName: AAADist1
</ComponentDetails>
<Thread>19</Thread>
</NotificationServicesEvent>

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

We checked the obvious things like the SMTP server state and the e-mail
address. Both environments use the same SMTP server, and the testing
environment is working right and the e-mail address is ok. Then we compared
the distribution servers and we detect the unique difference is that we have
installed the Windows Server 2003 sp 1 in our development environment.

So we proceed to install that service pack in the testing environment. We
could reproduce the same error in our testing environment. Now we know the
error is related to the service pack, but we don’t know how to solve it.

Also, if we use our distributor server as SMTP server (localhost), the mails
are sent, but we need to use the other SMTP server, because our production
environment works in this way.

We don’t have more clues and we couldn’t find information about this on the
Internet.

Some body can help us?

Dear Hilda

We have seen this problem before on a sporadic basis and even raised an
incident with Microsoft , but they were never able to resolve it.

the "Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation." Comes
from a failed call to CDOSYS when they have not passed back the
underlying exception details so we dont know why the call failed.

The only suggestion i can make is to start the local SMTP mail server
on the NS box and set it to relay to your main mail server. Then point
NS to use the local SMTP server.

Let us know how you get on

Kate Patterson MBCS

One more thing I experienced as well with this is enter the server name as
localhost, don't just leave it blank, which is supposed to default to the
local machine.

I fought this for a while, but this seemed to work for us with the addition
of adding a smart host, which relays to our regular mail SMTP server.

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