Pinging an email address in Windows 7, 8 and 8.1’s Command Prompt console verifies its validity. Once you have the domain’s MX records, you can connect to the domain’s mail server and verify the email address. To begin, you must first enable the Telnet remote access protocol.

1st Step

To open the Windows Features panel, press Windows-R, type optional features, and press Enter. To use Telnet, check the box next to Telnet Client and click OK. Restart your PC to apply the changes.

2nd Step

In Windows 8/8.1, press Windows-X, then select Command Prompt. On Windows 7, type Command Prompt and press Enter.

3rd Step

Simply type nslookup –type=mx domain.com into the Command Prompt console to ping an email address. Press Enter to load the domain MX records list found next to Mail Exchanger. For Gmail, MX records are gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com, mx1.hotmail.com, and mta5.am0.yahoodns.net.

4th Step

Connect to the domain’s mail server via Telnet. Then Telnet gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25, and swap it with any other Gmail MX record. To connect, enter.

5th Step

To contact the domain’s mail server, type HELO and press Enter. Next, replace [email protected] with your email address. Replacing [email protected] with the email address to ping, press Enter.

6th Step

To ping, enter. If the email address exists, you get “OK.” Invalid email addresses return “Does Not Exist” or “Disabled” messages.