Enable telnet client on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008

In the field of networking telnet is a very useful command line tool for checking connectivity with services running on server. Let us assume your email client is unable to send emails saying that unable to connect with your outgoing (SMTP) email server. What will you do in this case?

1. Very first thing you will check if there is any configuration issue.
2. If configuration is okay then you will ping your outgoing (SMTP) server host.
3. If you are able to ping outgoing server then open Command Prompt and telnet it (also called port ping). The command will look like below

telnet host_ip_or_fqdn tcp_port
telnet mail.somedomain.com 25
telnet mail.somedomain.com 110
telnet www.somedomain.com 80

But, while execute telnet command have you ever got below error? You certainly if you are having any one of these OSes Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008.

'telnet' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

You will wonder inspite of correct syntax it is throwing error.

Now coming to the main point starting from Windows Vista and all later OSes (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008) Microsoft has included Telnet Client as a feature which can be turned on or off.

Enable telnet client on Windows Server 2008

• Open Server Manager by clicking Start > Administrative Tools > Server Manager.
• Click on Features and the Add Features.

• Select Telnet Client from features list and then click Next button to proceed.

• Click Install button to install selected features in Step 2.

• Once installation completes click Close button to exit the Features installation wizard.

Enable telnet client on Windows 7 and Windows Vista

• Open Programs and Features by clicking Start > Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features
• Click Turn Windows features on or off.

• Select Telnet Client and then click OK to turn on the selected feature.

Great! We have successfully installed Telnet Client on Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Now executing telnet command from Command Prompt no longer throw “‘telnet’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.”  error.