Unable to open Personal Folder on Outlook 98

[HT1299]

I have a user who logins to the Metaframe server to access her Outlook. she setups her Personal Folder (*.pst) on her Outlook98. She saved the PST file on our FP (File&Print) server.

Occasionally, the user will get a message "Unable to display the folder. The file F:\Personal Folder.pst could not be accessed." Sometimes, it happens three or four times a day. In order to open the Personal Folder, my user has to close the Outlook and re-open it again.

It seems like the file was being locked. I can see the file was being opened by the user if I go to the FP server. Then go to Open Files under Shared Folder options in Computer Management. The file was opened and the status was read+write and under Locks# was 2.

Is this that's causing my user can't accessed her PST file??

Does anybody experience the same problem that we do?

Any help and suggestion will be appreciated.

Additional info: My Metaframe server is running on Window NT Terminal Server 4.0 SP 6, FP server is running on Windows 2K Advanced server and Exchange server is 5.5

Thank you.

 

[joegz]

It sounds like the .pst file is being opened by someone else (probably by accident) and so what happens is that since only one Outlook client can access the file who ever is the last to access the file gets priority and the client get locked out.

If this is what is happening client can try password protecting the file to keep others from opening the file to see if this stops the behavior. Or you could setup a folder that only the client has permissions to access. joegz
"Sometimes you just need to find out what it's not first to figure out what it is."

 

[HT1299]

Thanks for your respond.

No, the PST file is not being opened by other user. I forgot to mention that the PST file is located in the user home directory. Nobody except the user and administrator have full access to the directory.

Any other thoughts??

Thanks

HT

 

[joegz]

I was curious if when this occurs that if the client opens the windows explorer does the drive letter display a red x like the network drive is disconnected?

Maybe the network connection is just timing out? Perhaps the information in this article may help

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q297/6/84.asp

joegz
"Sometimes you just need to find out what it's not first to figure out what it is."

 

[HT1299]

Thanks for the respond joegz.

You have a good point. It might be the network drive got disconnected that's causing that problem.

So far my user hasn't complained yet. Like I said on my first posting, this problem is happened occasionally. But I'll definately take a look at the network drive when it happens again. I want to know if the network drive is disconnected. I'll let you know.

Thanks.

HT

 

[Kraeg]

I just had a problem like this on my stand-alone home PC (I found this thread from a search looking for help).

It ended up there was no space left on the drive with my PST file.... clearing some space fixed it. It wouldn't download e-mails because there was no space to increase the PST file size (although it wouldn't delete items either.... that must somehow increase space first).