Hangs during sync on Intel Macs and Exchange server

[Kelly McCollum]

This problem has nagged me for months and I've yet to find a solution, so
I'm going to pour it all out here ...

I administer a 60-Mac office and this problem affects only Intel Macs
connecting to an Exchange server. In some cases these users had Intel Macs
before they switched to Exchange and some were on Exchange before using
Intel Macs. Only the combination of the two factors seem to be common among
those having this problem.

The problem: On syncing, Entourage will give the spinning beach ball for
between several seconds and several minutes. During that time Entourage and
other applications are unresponsive, but they will "catch up" to any
keystrokes entered during the hang.

Mailbox size seems to be a factor, as some users have gotten the problem to
go away by cutting their accounts down to bare minimum size by filing to
local folders multiple times per day. But I've seen accounts as small as 20
MB still affected.

I've tried taking the Identities folder out of Spotlight indexing and Norton
auto-scanning with no luck. I've rebuilt databases and tried setting up the
accounts from scratch, reloading all the messages from the server. Still no
luck.

Has anyone else seen this? Any suggestions?

Thanks for listening,

Kelly

 

[William Smith]

This problem has nagged me for months and I've yet to find a solution, so
I'm going to pour it all out here ...

I administer a 60-Mac office and this problem affects only Intel Macs
connecting to an Exchange server. In some cases these users had Intel Macs
before they switched to Exchange and some were on Exchange before using
Intel Macs. Only the combination of the two factors seem to be common among
those having this problem.

The problem: On syncing, Entourage will give the spinning beach ball for
between several seconds and several minutes. During that time Entourage and
other applications are unresponsive, but they will "catch up" to any
keystrokes entered during the hang.

Mailbox size seems to be a factor, as some users have gotten the problem to
go away by cutting their accounts down to bare minimum size by filing to
local folders multiple times per day. But I've seen accounts as small as 20
MB still affected.

I've tried taking the Identities folder out of Spotlight indexing and Norton
auto-scanning with no luck. I've rebuilt databases and tried setting up the
accounts from scratch, reloading all the messages from the server. Still no
luck.

Has anyone else seen this? Any suggestions?

Hi Kelly!

How are your Macs connecting to your Exchange server? Are they using a
front-end or back-end server address? I always advice using a back-end
server address while on the same network as the Exchange Server and
using a front-end (OWA) address only when connecting from outside the
network.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[Kelly McCollum]

How can I tell?

We're within a university and our exchange server is run off site by the
university's central IT department. So I don't really have any control over
the server, but they are reasonably responsive to help requests.

 

[William Smith]

How can I tell?

We're within a university and our exchange server is run off site by the
university's central IT department. So I don't really have any control over
the server, but they are reasonably responsive to help requests.

Hi Kelly!

This isn't a foolproof method for determining the server type but if
you were given an address that begins with HTTP or HTTPS then you're
most likely using a front-end server address.

If you are using a laptop, moving from your university network to home
and you're able to use Entourage in both places then you're definitely
using a front-end address.

Since you have good luck with your IT folks then present them the
back-end vs. front-end question and mention that you don't want an OWA
address.

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/>