"Failed to send SMTP message" error when MOM 2005 tries to send SMTP e-mail notification response

When you configure Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 to send Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) e-mail notification responses, the e-mail notification is not sent. You receive the following error message in the Application log on the MOM 2005 server:

By default, MOM 2005 uses NTLM to authenticate the SMTP server that is listed in the E-mail Server global settings in the MOM 2005 Administrator console before MOM 2005 sends the e-mail notification response. If the SMTP server does not support NTLM authentication or is configured to accept anonymous authentication, you receive the error message that is mentioned in the "Symptoms" section.

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

To work around this problem, you must create a registry key to enable MOM 2005 to send e-mail response notifications without using NTLM authentication. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then right-click the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Mission Critical Software\OnePoint\Configurations\<Configuration group name>\Operations\Consolidator
   Note The configuration group name is the name that you created during the initial setup of the MOM configuration group. You may have more than one configuration group. In that case, you must change the registry subkey for each configuration group.
3. Click New, click DWORD value, type SendSmtpAnonymous for the DWORD value name, and then press ENTER.
4. Double-click SendSmtpAnonymous. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, type 1 in the Value data: field, and then click OK.
5. Quit Registry Editor.

This behavior is by design.