Phone Interview with ISP - Questions about Outlook

schmalz2

I had a phone interview for an entry level help desk position for an ISP and I thought it was going very smoothly. She then asked a few technical questions. I've only studied networking related topics and have a CCNA. I know I should broaden my horizons but I get very bored when I start looking at Microsoft material. I did stumble over answering the tech questions but I believe answered most of them correctly. There were only a couple of questions. Because of stumbling over the tech questions and there being so few questions even though I knew the answers it really bummed me out. Then she asked "What are 3-5 steps to troubleshoot not receiving emails in Outlook?". Besides checking to make sure there's an internet connection I didn't know how to answer this. Can someone answer this interview question for me? Also any recommendations to broaden my horizons outside of networking and not getting bored with it?

Bokeh

Check to make sure the password is set correctly, the login correctly, the right port for receiving email. Things like this.

hackman2007

Here are some basic questions/steps I would do/ask.

1. Are all users experiencing the problem?
2. Create a test account and see if the test account receives e-mail.
3. Make sure the exchange server is up and running.
4. Did the user many any recent changes to their system?
5. If webmail is enabled, can the user get to their e-mail from there?
6. Does the user get any errors when opening Outlook?

drkat

I'd go with these for that question:

1. Are they in cached exchange mode?
2. Can they send mail?
3. When did this start happening and are they the only user affected?

Reasoning:
Cache exchange mode provides a user the ability to look at their inbox without being connected to the exchange server. If the ost file for their offline-inbox is corrupted they will not show any "new" emails and their "sent" items wont show (ie staying in the outbox) correctly as well.

If they can send email but not receive it? is it one sender or all senders? send them a test message
- if it's all senders but they can send just fine then I'd be looking at inbox rules or cached mode (again)

taking a user out of cached exchange and or rebuilding the mail profile will take care of the issue i'd say 90% of the time.

MC85

I used to work for an ISP.

1. Make sure they are connected to the Internet
2. Note and document any error messages they're getting
3, Make sure they have the correct server settings (incoming mail server specifically) and ports
4. Make sure they're using the right username and password
5. Be sure they aren't over their quota
6. Make sure they don't have an antivirus/firewall blocking the ports

When working for an ISP it's very unlikely the server would be down without you knowing it.

it_consultant

Here is the most important thing to know when troubleshooting outlook: Press shift key, right click on the outlook icon in the taskbar - go to connection status. A lot of information can be gleaned from going there.

2 - Start outlook with the /safe switch to turn off all add-ins
3- Be familiar with common ports, 110, 25, 993, 995, 587. Know which major ISPs use what, for example I know that Google SMTP uses 587 and TLS for the sending server. Later versions of outlook "know" this by default too, but its good to know by heart.