Outlook Clients not updating until activity in client window!

[Jgabel]

All of our email clients (Outlook 2000) are slow and often not updating the GUI when new mail is received or sent. You must click on another folder or hit send and receive for new mail to visibly show up. The mail is on the server but the clients are not getting the updated info.

The problem manifests after a few days but seem much more responsive after a reset (go figure).

Anybody have any suggestions other than daily reboots?

TIA!

 

[Jgabel]

Server is NT 4 SP6 (with all post updates) Exchange 5.5 SP4

 

[Guest_imported]

I am experiencing much the same problem. However, reboots do not make it go away. It is sporadic on our network. Some clients experience this and some don't. I have been talking to microsoft and cisco about the problem. Microsoft feels the problem is that the clients are not receiving the UDP packets that indicate there is new mail. Cisco does not think this is the case. I am doing packet captures and discussing them with both microsoft and cisco. To this point, I have no answers. I would appreciate it if you would keep me advised of any thing you find out and I will do the same.

Scott

 

[Jgabel]

I have been looking into the network side of things as well. I have been trying to rewire this bloody mess of a network as well. We have numerous switches (stand alone/ unmanaged) and a few hubs with a jungle of cable to work though. So I can not discount the UDP failures. We also use a Proxy server (removing soon) that may cause some of these issues.

The reboot was a mere fantasy BTW it had no effect during normal work hours. When network traffic is low we do not have the same problems. I'm working up a time / problem chart now to try and use that against my network usage and wee if the 2 correspond.

What type of switch layout are you running ?

 

[Guest_imported]

We have a core Cisco switch which connects to a second layer of switches. After further trouble shooting of our problem, we believe their is a network problem in the switches. The tests on the Exchange Server all show that it is doing what it should. Your problem sounds like networking as well. Through my conversations with Microsoft, if you are doing any sort of filtering or using a proxy server, you may experience this problem. There is a hotfix for Outlook 2000/2002 which will force the client to poll the server. This works around the problem rather than solving it.

 

[Jgabel]

Did they happen to give you the location of the hotfix ?

Thanks again!