Find out the mail server without using any 3rd party tool

Myself being a mail/web solution provider, always juggles with various mail related queries. Infact fond of playing with mail servers. With more than 2 years in the EMAIL hosting business, I am ready to take any task related to Web solutions.

As I provide Push Email service(customized EMAIL solutions) to clients ranging from big Corporate and Multi-National Companies, Small retail vendors and even individuals, I've subscribed to various paid service to track down DNS related stuffs. Where i can get an idea whether Name server has been resolved or not. In short i am completely dependent on these 3rd party paid tools for NS, MX, A, CNAME, AAA, SOA, SRV DNS entries.

One late night i was in Sedan with my personal notebook, on the way to home. Suddenly one of my client pinged on BB Msgr, just to know whether his domain has been transferred to managed server or not. As s/he was in worry, of losing corporate mails during downtime. The moment s/he buzzed I switched on the machine, and clicked on small Internet Explorer icon from the taskbar. Unfortunately it got crashed, due to installation of some wrong unstable pluggin in last update. Err!!! As said earlier, it was my personal small notebook, so using Windows with having single default browser IE (which i hate most. Undoubtedly Mozilla Firefox is every open source lover's 1st choice). Now I was in a situation to either tell my client blindly any thing(which i hate), or to find some really good stuff to let my-self know the exact current status of Name server/MX point status.

After putting lots of pressure and stress on me, I succeeded to recall few set of commands, which i had read couple of years earlier in one Hacking journal. This helped me to find out the mail server address for virtually any domain, without using any 3rd party tool. Here it goes(considering your are having Windows OS):

• Open your command prompt (using win+R and type cmd)
• Type nslookup
• The prompt will change to >
• Type set q=mx (for mail exchange)
• Now type any domain name, you wish to find out server address for, e.g: swatantra.info
• Now look for the MX preference lines.
• These are the ones that list the various smtp/esmtp mail server addresses.. higher the preference no you choose the better.. because they'll work smoother..
• Once you get through, say exit to command prompt, to quit.

Huuh, till date i was using paid service.