Connectivity problem on random computers

zippie666

Hello world,

I'm currently doing an internship in a very big company (>5000 employees) and they recently migrated their exchange servers to exchange 2010. All went pretty well, but estimated is that between 10 and 50 users cannot use outlook anymore. Client computers are windows xp sp3 and have office 2003 installed.

Now the really strange thing happens in this window (random screenshot from google):

When I enter the server address and user account it sometimes recognizes it, sometimes it won't. After pressing the check name button it usually gives errors about not being able to connect to the exchange server. When clicked repeatedly sometimes out of the blue it does get recognised and it gets underlined like in that screenshot. When pressing next I get errors again about not being able to connect to the exchange server. When trying this on other computers that have the same OS, same patches, same antivirus/firewall/security setting, that are on the same subnet, ... you can connect on most computers and you don't have any problems at all. The webmail works on all computers, so I'm guessing it's an office 2003 client setting but I can't seem to find what. The encryption required is not the cause of these problems, I have found info about that on the net already. I really have no clue at all, any of you have any idea at all what might be the cause of this?

Thanks in advance,
zippie666

zippie666

Also, I don't think it's a DNS issue since only a "lucky" few (10+) have these problems. Flushing DNS-cache doesn't change a thing, it doesn't break the working ones nor fix the broken ones...

Mojo_666

DNS, Network issue, build image, you need to find the common denominator (there WILL be one) but that's what to look at first. Seemingly random issues are hard to pin down but use method to work it out, once you worked out whats wrong work on the solution and the easiest way to roll it out.

Essendon

Do these users have the same issue on a different compute too?

zippie666

Essendon wrote: »

Do these users have the same issue on a different compute too?

No, it is computer-bound

Users with problems trying on a working workstation don't have problems...

Essendon

zippie666 wrote: »

No, it is computer-bound

Users with problems trying on a working workstation don't have problems...

That to me means something is foobar on those machines. Instead of troubleshooting the problem and getting nowhere really, why not just reimage these machines.

jibbajabba

Since you are using Outlook 2003 - you may have to set the registry key "DefConnectOpts" in order to allow RPC over HTTP

Error messages when you try to connect Outlook 2007 to Exchange Server: "The action cannot be completed" or "Your Microsoft Exchange Server is unavailable" or "Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook"

This KB is for Outlook 2007 - but applies to 2003 as well (change the version accordingly - version 14 to 11 (I THINK ) )

zippie666

First off all, thanks for your replies! The problem has been solved , albeit on another way. There was a root certificate missing on the client computer, for more info see: Why is the Entrust 2048 bit Root Certificate not installed? — Technote Article — Entrust


Again, thanks for your help