Global Address List Problem

[telemorgan]

A few users this morning complained that they could not open there mailboxes. They are getting ( at least this one Outlook 2K client is ) the message that says, "The server containing the global Address List is no longer available..... ". We have Ech2K3 running and for mostly everyone is seems fine. However there are these few users that cannot open there mailboxes. Any ideas?

 

[markdmac]

I would first try creating new Outlook profiles for these users just to be sure it is not a local problem. Also have them try opening their mailbox via OWA.

check that their DNS is working correctly.

If the above are all OK then you may need to check the Exchange database for problems, however this sounds to me like a local PC issue.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[telemorgan]

Thanks Mark, I tried to recreate the profile on the one user and it didn't work. When the time came to name the mailbox to connect to ( the part where you click "check name" ) it got an error while connecting to the mailbox. As of now there are two users both outlook 2K and also vertias backup software ( during the backup jobs ) that cannot connect to the mailboxes. These two users can connect via OWA just not with their local clients. I don't think DNS is a problem it seems to be working fine.

The event viewer in one of our domain controllers ( there are two in this site )gets an error every few minutes or so. ( Event ID: 1126, USER: Telephonics\tele-mail2$, Unable to establish connection with global catalog. ) Both dc's are set to be global catalogs for this site. This has to be the cause but im not sure why this is happening. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[telemorgan]

I am going to post this question stating the dc error in the win2K server forum. Hopefully someone has seen this error before.

 

[markdmac]

The fact that the PCs can not fidn a GC is indicative of a DNS problem.

verify that the PCs are configured only with Internal DNS servers and not ISP DNS.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[telemorgan]

will do mark thanks, I'll check that out tomorrow morning when I get in.

Just curious, we still have a WINS running on our network and that database is a mess. Do you think this problem could have anything to do with that. Do the PC's look at WINS for GC for anything?

 

[xmsre]

When an Outlook client connects to Exchange, the DSProxy service gives a referral back to the client. That name is stored in the profile under the key that begins dca740... as data for the value 001e6602. From that point forward, outlook 2000 and later clients go directly to the GC, without getting another referral.

First, look in the client registry under the profile and see what server you got the referral for.