Windows 2008 POP3 Missing

June 29th, 2011 Posted in John Shaw, Windows 2008
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Like many developers I have chosen to upgrade to Windows 2008 to test enterprise scenarios. I have a virtual environment that I want to test in isolation from my local machine. I’m currently trying to test some email functionality that will notify users in a windows workflow. In Windows 2003 this is really easy to do because you have the ability to setup a POP3 server to setup one or more email accounts to test this type of functionality.

Unfortunately, I discovered two key missing features in Windows 2008:

  • No Outlook Express to view my messages
  • No POP3 server.

After searching around the web and spending half a day of ‘wasted time’. I came up with a solution that will prevent fellow developers from wasting a day like me. Essentially, we will use the out of the box SMTP server, supplied with Windows 2008 for outgoing mail ,and use the free visendo POP3 extender for inbound mail. �

Install SMTP Server

  • Install SMTP role in windows 2008
  • Open SMTP in IIS 6.0 and add a new alias domain called ‘test.com’
  • Run -> Services.msc, navigate to SMTP service and set to automatic start up
  • Reboot machine

Install Visendo SMTP (pop3) Extender for Windows 2008

This is a nice little program that will simulate a POP3 server on your machine. The main component is a windows service that will monitor the SMTP drop location and move sent files to a mailbox specific folder underneath the default mailroot folder. You can then pull these files from mail programs like Windows Mail by entering the credentials for that mailbox.

Install Visendo SMTP (pop3) Extender Update

<VISENDO>

<POP3>

<Outbound UseOutboundPop3=”true” StoreFolder=”C:\inetpub\mailroot\drop” ServerPort=”110″ ServerIP=”192.168.10.3“/>

</POP3>

<accounts>

<mailbox datadir=”C:\inetpub\mailroot\drop\me1_test_com” destination=”me@test.com” password=”Pass“/>

<mailbox datadir=”C:\inetpub\mailroot\drop\me_test_com” destination=”me1@test.com” password=”Pass”/>

</accounts>

</VISENDO>

  • Run -> Services.msc -> Start VisendoSMTPExtender service

If you have any errors see C:\ProgramData\ppedv\VisendoSMTPExtender\Logs.

Install Windows Mail

Find out more information here.

  • Enter the incoming and outgoing server to be the hostname of your machine, click Next and Finish

  • You should now have an account configured in Windows Live Mail as shown below

Test POP3

  • Open Windows Mail click on the account that you have just created.
  • Create a New Mail Message and address this to me@test.com, subject line, Hello World and attach a picture as shown below.

  • Click Send
  • Press F5 to send/receive.
  • If you navigate to C:\inetpub\mailroot\Drop you will see the new email message being moved into your new mail account folder
  • You should now receive your message

Conclusion

Obviously this can’t be used in a production environment but in most cases this is suitable for developers needs. There are also other free mail server programs on the market that you could use such as hmailserver at http://www.hmailserver.com which are ok in development but I would still use Exchange in a production situation.

The visendo program is pretty easy to use and if you want to add multiple accounts this can be done by adding extra mail accounts and passwords to the Visendo configuration file. In addition I have also tested this with the BizTalk 2009 POP3 adapter and there weren’t any issues.

- John Shaw

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