Windows 7 Telnet is not Recognised

This is so annoying! You go to use telnet on Windows 7, via the command prompt, and you get 'telnet' is not recognized as an internal or external command. There are loads of articles on how to enable telnet on Windows 7 (here's one of many!).

But after having enabled it in programs and features, I was still getting the not recognised error. I checked that I had the telnet.exe file in the C:\Windows\System32 and I did. So I double clicked it and sure enough it pops up and works.

The only other difference is that I need to remember to use the o command to open a connection:

Telnet> o my_domain

Test an IMAP Connection (Telnet)

Following on from post about how to test a POP3 connection using telnet, I thought I'd add a quick one about testing an IMAP connection. It's pretty much the same, but you use the 143 port number instead:

> telnet mail.mydomain.com 143
> login my_user_name my_password

Happy days :)


Update:
Recently I started getting an error when using the login command. Turns out I needed to do the following:


> 10 login my_user_name my_password


All subsequent commands needed to use 20, 30, etc. This is a good resource for more commands.

Test a POP3 Connection (Telnet)

I often find myself needing to be able to check a username and password combination for somebodies email connection (normally because they have forgotten their password - again!). A really quick and easy way to do this is using telnet. Here's the easiest way to do it, from the DOS/command prompt:

> telnet mail.mydomain.com
> user my_user_name
> pass my_password

At this point, if all is good, you will have made a successful connection. Show all messages as a list using:

> list

If you want to see the contents of a specific mail then use:

> retr mail_item_number

If you leave the connection with no activity then it close the connection itself, but preferably use:

> quit

There are some more telnet commands here. Also, if you using an IP address, you may well have to use a port number (usually 110). e.g. 123.123.123.123 110