Message Delivery Test and External Message Transfer test fails with 'Access Denied' error (4348642)

This article describes an issue when message delivery test and external message transfer test fails with "access denied" error.

Microsoft released hotfixes for Exchange 2000 SP3 and Exchange 2003 SP1 and SP2 which will cause diagnostic tests using the MAPI protocol to fail with an Access Denied error message. The MAPI protocol is used in the Message Delivery Test and the External Message Transfer Test (when MAPI is used as the submission protocol).

Please see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article for more details and how to workaround this issue: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=912918. Using alternate credentials that reside in a parent Windows Domain for diagnostic tests running against an Exchange server in a child Windows domain may still have issues despite the workaround described in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article.