This article assumes that Cygwin is not installed on the Windows computer. Complete instructions for installing Cygwin and configuring for Exim is included in this section.

1. Place the Windows XP Professional CD-Rom into your CD-Rom Drive. The "Welcome to Microsoft Windows XP" splash screen should come up if you have autorun turned on for the CD-ROM.

   If not and the splash screen does not come up, navigate to the drive letter of the CD-ROM and run setup.exe.

2. From the "Welcome to Microsoft Windows XP" splash screen, click on the "Install optional Windows components" option.

   You can also get to this by opening the "Add/Remove Programs" applet from from "Control Panel". From the "Add or Remove Programs" dialog, click the "Add/Remove Windows Components" button (left).

3. Click the check box for "Internet Information Services (IIS)". By default, the "SMTP Service" is included with a default IIS install so it is possible to leave all the default installation settings intact.

   I, however, like to add other services and options (i.e. FTP). To do this, make sure the "Internet Information Services (IIS)" option is selected and click the "Details" button. Add or remove any other services or options, but make sure that the "SMTP Service" stays checked.

   Click [Next] to start the installation process.

4. Once IIS is installed on your machine you can view your home page in any web browser by typing the following into the address bar of your web browser:

   http://localhost

   You can substitute localhost for the name of your computer!

   If everything was successful, you will be presented with a "Welcome to Windows XP Server Internet Services" page with a message indicating "Your Web service is now running.".

5. In addition to a fully functioning web server, you should now also have the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service running. There are many ways to check if it is running.

   I first look at the running services:

   C:\> net start

   and look for the "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)" running.

   We can also check that it is running on port 25 by running:

   C:\> netstat -an | grep  25

   You should see a response like:

   TCP    0.0.0.0:25         0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING

   Finally, I like to make sure SMTP is responding to requests. To do this, telnet to your machine on port 25. I then like to send the HELLO command as follows:

   C:\> telnet localhost 25
   220 melody Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.2600.2180 ready at  Thu, 15 Sep 2005 19:39:33 -0400
   
   helo
   250 melody Hello [127.0.0.1]
   
   quit
   221 2.0.0 melody Service closing transmission channel

6. To allow all internal / networked workstations within your network to use IIS as an outbound SMTP server, we need to perform several tasks. The first task is to configure the firewall (if installed as part of Windows XP Service Pack 2 or higher) to allow traffic to pass through.

   Invoke the "Control Panel" and select the "Security Center" applet. If the firewall is not enabled (NOT MONITORED), then there is no need to continue with this section. If however, you have the firewall enabled, click the "Windows Firewall" in the "Manage Security Sections for:" section. In the "Exceptions" tab, click the "Add Port" button. In the dialog box, use a name of "SMTP" and the Port Number "25". Also, make sure to check the TCP radio button. The "Scope" of this rule should be set to "Any computer" by default.

   We now need to configure SMTP from within the IIS Console. At a minimum, we need to configure the "Relay Restrictions" to allow computers within the network to relay mail through this virtual server. In this example, I will simply grant to all computers the ability to relay through this server.

   Configuring SMTP (and other IIS services) is done using the "Internet Information Services" console. This application can be found from the Start menu: Start / Programs / Administration Tools / Internet Information Services.

   Once the "Internet Information Services" console is open you will see any IIS web services you have running on your machine including the SMTP server and FTP server (if you chose to install them with IIS).

   From the tree, right-click on the item "Default SMTP Virtual Server", and select "Properties". From the "Default SMTP Virtual Server Properties" dialog, select the "Access" tab. Now, select the "Relay" button under "Relay Restrictions". By default, the option "Only the list below" is selected. For my example, I want to grant everyone access so I click the "All except the list below" radio button and click "OK" on both open dialog boxes.

   After making this change, we need to restart the SMTP server from the main IIS console application. Again, right-click on the item "Default SMTP Virtual Server" and select "stop". Then do it again and select "start".