Failed to connect to exchange server

[cchahn]

Please forgive me if this is in the wrong forum - I was not for sure whether to put it here or in the VPN area. Running SBS 2000 at the office and am trying to get the boss's workstation at home to connect to exchange server so he can access his email and calendar. Everything used to work great until about a week ago when outlook started giving me the msg that exchange server was unavailable. Workstation is running XP with all current updates and outlook 2003 with all updates. VPN connection works great. I can telnet into port 25 on the mail server. I can ping some network resources from the workstation but not the mailserver, by name nor IP. BTW, from another remote workstation, I can log on via vpn and connect to exchange using his logon.

 

[ShackDaddy]

Check the workstation's WINS server address. Make sure it is pointed to the internal WINS server. WINS is still required for Exchange, even though it's largely not needed for XP in W2K environments.

ShackDaddy

 

[cchahn]

I have the workstation pointed to the WINS IP on the server, but still on success. FYI, I can ping the server IP using the network IP but not its public IP.

 

[ShackDaddy]

I would focus on the workstation configuration: making sure that McAfee's Internet Worm Protection or other local firewall software products aren't preventing RPC traffic through the VPN link. Really, I think that's what this problem boils down to: whether or not RPC traffic is flowing.

If you can ping the internal IP of the server, you have connectivity. Are you able to ping it by name? When you do, does that resolve to the external or internal address? When the VPN connection is up, you may not be able to ping the server's external address.

I wouldn't be surprised if turning off all security products resulted in your being able to connect. If that's true, then narrow down which one needs to be reconfigured.

ShackDaddy