Outlook Clients Continually lose connection to exchange server.

[cpaetz]

Several outlook clients in our office continually lose their connection to the exchange server causing that damn little bubble to pop up in the bottom right corner saying "Outlook is trying to connect to exchange". This is more annoying than it is a real problem since the clients allways manage to reconnect.

The server is an older P4 running Exchange 2003 on windows server 2003.

I've popped in to preformance monitor several times during the connection issue and dont see anything seriously out of whack with the CPU, Memory or Hard disk utilization on the server.

Clients are a mix between win2k and XP Pro with Outlook 2003.

Anyone else run accross this problem?

 

[adcfaq]

this is NOT an issue, u supposed to enable Outlook cache mode.

just ignorce it.

u may consider to disable it by

http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/assistance/HA011402591033.aspx

question is: why bother? it doesn't hurt ur users, just some "sensitive user" may get annoyed, er?
Educate them to calm down. it's only do good for their outlook performance. lol.


-----
Directory Services/Exchange Consultant

 

[gpa3]

No, the problem is that they have firewalls on the workstations. Outlook does not like this. Turn off the firewalls on the workstations and use one hardware firewall to protect the entire company.

 

[cpaetz]

gpa3, It just so happens that there are no firewalls installed on the machines and there is a good hardware firewall in from of the internet gateway. Thanks Though.

Benlu, Thanks for the information I will read the artical and let you know how it works out.

Chris

 

[MoobyCow]

As Benlu said enabaling cached mose should help some.

If you have users with large mailboxes they can have problems retrieving all of the messages in the folder when they first view it after opening Outlook for the day. It's simply that Outlook can't receive the information quickly enough from Exchange to prevent the popup. If every email in a folder isn't made avialable within a certain time frame Outlook pops up the connectivity message.

Think of it like the "Sending/Receiving" message box you get with POP accounts.

 

[blubomber]

Enabling exchange cache mode will not get rid of the bubble. I have all my users in cache mode and if they loose connectivity to the server, they get the little bubble.

You could try the Exchange Server Best Practices tool from microsoft.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...1f-4bee-4943-ac22-e2ddbd258df3&displaylang=en

That may help you pinpoint a performance or communication issue.

 

[MoobyCow]

Blubomber,

Of course if they lose connection they will get the bubble. What happens when users are not in cahed mode is that they get the bubble even when they are connected. This happens because Outlook is fooled into thinking the connection is bad because the folders are not loading within it's timeout period.

There could be a connection problem at his site, but it may just be slow loading of large folders.

 

[blubomber]

Oh, i see MoobyCow. That makes since then to go with cached mode. Thanks for the update.

 

[nickpark]

Can you ping the Exchange server while connectivity is lost?

How long is it lost for?

Does it affect all clients , all clients on a specific subnet, or just a gaggle?

Exchange cached-mode is not supported for users with Roaming Profiles.

 

[tk808]

Hi Nickpark,

1. When you mention "Roaming profiles" do you mean mailboxes that access a mail server in another domain of the same forest?

I have one client with this situation who connects over a designated smtp connector and causes lots of problems with dns, replication, etc.
---------------------------------------

2. As for this random connectivity with OL 2K3/Exchge 2K3, my clients seem to be having this problem in the mornings. However, once it does finally connect there are only a couple messages that needed to be downloaded. All are running cached mode.

Another problem is that the logon pop-up boxes show different e-mail servers in the whole forest. Why can't OL look at the respective account's settings and just try to connect to that e-mail server?? Thanks all for your input!

 

[nickpark]

1. no.
Roaming profile is probably unrelated...
It's an active directory account level configuration - not exchange.

2.
why are you getting logon pop-up boxes?
As I have interpreted it, as long as the users are authenticated to the system (domain) in which the mailboxes are located, no logon popup should appear.



You dont have any virus checkers on the desktops checmking the mail do you?

 

[tk808]

2. Yes, no logon pop-up should appear for these mailbox-specific domain-authenticated users, but occasionally they just get kicked off (only OL). LAN connectivity remains. It even happens 'after' successfully downloading new messages, in which you'd think connection to the server is complete.

Yes, there is a realtime enabled virus app that checks in and outbound files that is most likely the culprit. Would excluding outlook.exe from real time scanning help? Thanks in advance.

 

[nickpark]

you will need to setup a test account or login to the user's account to repeat the issue. Then try disabling the virus checker; however they normally only check files as they are opened - some do check emails as they are delivered. I guess there are no error events in the exchange server event viewer?

 

[AsokTheIntern]

We had the same problem, but only with our laptops. It stopped when we changed the network cards from "autonegotiate" to match the configuration of the ports on the switch's (10/full).

Cheers
Asok