CDO.Message giving "Access denied" on Windows Server 2008

Question

I have a Classic ASP page that creates a CDO.Message object to send email. The code works on Window Server 2003 but not 2008. On 2008 an "Access is denied" error gets thrown. Here is a simple test page I wrote to diagnose the problem. How can I get this to work on Windows Server 2008?

---

dim myMail
Set myMail=CreateObject("CDO.Message")
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
    Response.Write ("Error Occurred: ")
    Response.Write (Err.Description)
Else
    Response.Write ("CDO.Message was created")
    myMail.Subject="Sending email with CDO"
    myMail.From="[email protected]"
    myMail.To="[email protected]"
    myMail.TextBody="This is a message."
    myMail.Send
    set myMail=nothing
End If

Answer 1

As long as you're using the Microsoft SMTP server(1) you can use the IIS Metabase Explorer to give the IIS_USRS group(2) read read access to the /LM/SmtpSvc/ and /LM/SmtpSvc/1/ nodes in the IIS Metabase.

Unfortunately this solution doesn't apply to Windows 7. Microsoft does not ship an SMTP server with Windows 7, making it very difficult to get around this problem without refactoring your code.

(1) See http://www.itsolutionskb.com/2008/11/installing-and-configuring-windows-server-2008-smtp-server

(2) See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/akashb/archive/2010/05/24/error-cdo-message-1-0x80040220-the-quot-sendusing-quot-configuration-value-is-invalid-on-iis-7-5.aspx

Answer 2

I never got the CDO.Message object to work on Windows Server 2008. However, I found a workaround. I wrote an email class that works on Windows Server 2008. Hope this helps someone else.

[ComVisible(true)]
public class Email
{
    public bool SendEmail(string strTo, string strFrom , string strSubject, string strBody)
    {
        bool result = false;

        try
        {
            MailMessage message = new MailMessage();
            SmtpClient client = new SmtpClient("smtp.mycompany.com");

            List<string> to = recipientList(strTo);
            foreach (string item in to)
            {
                message.To.Add(new MailAddress(item));
            }
            message.From = new MailAddress(strFrom);
            message.Subject = strSubject;
            message.Body = strBody;

            client.Send(message);

            result = true;
        }
        catch
        {
            result = false;
            throw;
        }
        return result;
    }

    private List<string> recipientList(string strTo)
    {
        List<string> result = new List<string>();
        string[] emailAddresses = strTo.Split(new Char[]{',',';'});
        foreach (string email in emailAddresses)
        {
            result.Add(email.Trim());
        }
        return result;
    }
}