Outlook users offline

taktsoi

Hi people, need your help. I am on the new job now but kinda dealing with outlook issues. i m scratching my head and trying to see why internal users of outlook keep disconnecting itself.

Most of the time, the outlook will show OFFLINE itself, few times a day. Of course, users will not be able to send/receive email until they are ONLINE.

I m trying to analyze it why this happens. this issue is pain in ass that i have to click online button for them.

I am currently focusing on the DNS. It sounds to me that there are like some kinda of DNS issue that the outlook can't authenticate the exchange/ AD properly.

i hope you guys can gimme some headsup and approach.

thank you guys.

blargoe

First of all, are there any problems with other network applications? Do all of the clients go offline at the same time?

When the client shows offline, have you done the basic network troubleshooting (check connectivity, current ipconfig, ping the server, test dns resolution, check event logs for obvious issues, etc)?

taktsoi

blargoe wrote:

First of all, are there any problems with other network applications? Do all of the clients go offline at the same time?

When the client shows offline, have you done the basic network troubleshooting (check connectivity, current ipconfig, ping the server, test dns resolution, check event logs for obvious issues, etc)?

Yes, I have done networking troubleshooting. I am able to ping the dns server, exchange server, etc. I tested DNS and its' fine. log shows nothing valuable.

However, I found something weird on Day1 at the new job place.

when i do ipconfig/all, i found that the dhcp leases not only the internal dns but external dns as well. i will see 2 internal dns (10.x.x.x) at the top and 2 external at the bottom (12.x.x.x).

I strongly believe this causes issue and thus causing internal clients seeing offline in outlook because external DNS must be configed as a DNS forwarder and internal DNS is for internal AD authentication.

am i on the right track?

This is on the production servers. I don't wanna mess things up........In this company, there's no engineer or consultants working on this. The manager is a new hire as well for 5 months. Here has plenty of issues...............

thank you for your quick response. I really appreciate.

sprkymrk

Well the DNS servers being configured by your DHCP server shouldn't be causing this unless the client can't contact an internal DNS server. Make sure the internal servers are listed first and you should be okay, because the client queries the servers in order. If the internal server is listed first and online, your client won't even try the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th DNS servers in the list.

Make sure your clients are not using Exchange Cached Mode, I have seen nothing but problems with it.

theseman

sprkymrk wrote:

Make sure your clients are not using Exchange Cached Mode, I have seen nothing but problems with it.

Arrghh Cached mode... our top level exchange guy pushes this as the standard for end users. If it is so great, why don't any of us (the IT staff) use it? lol.

seuss_ssues

sprkymrk wrote:

Make sure your clients are not using Exchange Cached Mode, I have seen nothing but problems with it.

/me nods...

It has its issues.

What version of exchange / outlook are you using. Ive experienced issues in the past and could generally google till i found an answer.

taktsoi

server is exchange server 2003 on windows server 2003
outlook is the office pro 2003.

infrastructure is so messed up. internal users treat IT as a helpdesk/warehouse. btw, i take the job. but here has a lot issues. they don't even train or teach me first day anything and i m in a go-figure state. all people who need support expect like i m there up and running, like i know what they doing, software they running, or even so, who is who. there is no standard images. backup has been failing. everybody is administrator. junks are on all desktop.....

hard to support...i m struggling......