Entourage 08 having connectivity/authentication issues

[knowmad]

Hello all,
Several but not all of the people in my office, using entourage 08
with with both 10.5 AND (in at least one case) 10.4 are getting an
error message claiming that their password was not accepted... actual
wording:
Mail could not be received at this time.
The server for account "(e-mail address removed)" returned the error
"Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password." Your username/
password or security setings may be inccorect. Would you like to try
re-entering your password?

With the No/Yes buttons.

If you hit Yes, no amount of typing/cutting and pasting/or other
method of entering the password gets it to work, however if you select
no, it finishes all syncing that had started, but will not get email
thereafter.

Going to OWA proves that the password/username combo work perfectly.

Changing the password is of no use.

Rebuilding the database is time consuming (some of these users have
truly HUGE databases) and of no use.

I was pointed at KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947699 by
my exchange hosting company, this is NOT the same issue, as I do get
an error message and their suggestions don't fix he issue.

I found several suggestions that said to clear the cache, which is
tough to do because the silly program insists in only giving you that
option IF you have successfully logged in to the account (workaround:
set system to work offline, then bring it back online and while it is
checking the authentication, before the error shows up, right click on
account and choose folder properties and then clear the cache, but do
it quick before it notices it has an issue) This worked on the first
computer I tried it on, but took all day to complete (big DB) and did
not work on the second or third machine/account it was tried on.

Rebuilding one account on a brand new machine with nothing else
running.... did not help.

The exchange hosting service claimed it was a problem with keychain,
however their 'fix' of sending me a valid certificate to be imported
by hand did nothing.

I am in dire need of new leads and ideas.
Knowmad(josh)

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

If you hit Yes, no amount of typing/cutting and pasting/or other
method of entering the password gets it to work, however if you select
no, it finishes all syncing that had started, but will not get email
thereafter.

The password is not stored into the Entourage database itself.
Rebuilding it should have no effect.
The password is stored in the Keychain and your problem might be there.
You can use the Keychain First Aid command in the Keychain Access
utility to repair your keychain. If it doens't do the trick, you can
look for the entries corresponding to your account and delete it to
allow Entourage to re-create it from scratch.

Corentin

 

[William Smith]

The password is not stored into the Entourage database itself.
Rebuilding it should have no effect.
The password is stored in the Keychain and your problem might be there.
You can use the Keychain First Aid command in the Keychain Access
utility to repair your keychain. If it doens't do the trick, you can
look for the entries corresponding to your account and delete it to
allow Entourage to re-create it from scratch.

You might also want to check this knowledgebase article
<http://entourage.mvps.org/exchange/kb_articles.html#909268>.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>

 

[knowmad]

The password is not stored into the Entourage database itself.
Rebuilding it should have no effect.
The password is stored in the Keychain and your problem might be there.
You can use the Keychain First Aid command in the Keychain Access
utility to repair your keychain. If it doens't do the trick, you can
look for the entries corresponding to your account and delete it to
allow Entourage to re-create it from scratch.

Corentin

Thanks for the feedback on this.
I tried the keychain (forgot to mention it) and whle it found a few
errors on one effected machine, it found none on the others. It also
had no effect on any of them.
Any suggestions on how to track down which keychain items are in use
by MS Entourage?
Knowmad

 

[knowmad]

You might also want to check this knowledgebase article
<http://entourage.mvps.org/exchange/kb_articles.html#909268>.

Hope this helps!

bill

Bill,
right error message/symptoms, wrong configuration.
I just checked to make certan, and our hosting company is using
Exchange 2007, and the cleints are (with a single exception) all using
Entourage 2008......
BUT, I can at least use this as maybe a jumping point for getting more
info out of MS.
Thanks.
Any body else got some ideas?
Knowmad

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Any suggestions on how to track down which keychain items are in use
by MS Entourage?
Knowmad

If you search for the server name, it should help. You can also search
for "exchange". They all have it in their name.


Corentin

 

[knowmad]

If you search for the server name, it should help. You can also search
for "exchange". They all have it in their name.

Corentin

Hello,
In the end the issue turned out to be malformed messages containing
corrupt asian language fonts......
the method for fixing them is to sync the account and watch the
progress, when it stops syncing it will have gotten to a certain
point, whether that point is an email in the inbox or a folder in the
hierarchy, you should be able to tell by looking at the progress bar
which tells you what folder it is working on.
Then, using a pc running outlook in online-only mode, take that folder
(or specific email if your lucky enough to ind it) and remove it from
the server, turning it into a pst. Go back to the mac and sync
again. Assuming that was the only item that was bad it will finish,
otherwise repeat as you hit each roadblock. When the sync is
complete, go back to the PC and re-import all the items out of the pst
and into their proper place on the server. Somehow during the server-
to-pst-to-server migration, it cleans up the bad fonts/headers/etc and
then (final step) you can sync it back to the mac.
So far this has worked on the first 5 machines it was tried on.
For the record I did not figure this out, but rather the credit goes
to a co-worker.
knowmad