Outlook freezes - looks like it loses RPC connectivity but ...

  • Thread starter Nigel Harvey - IT Sys Eng
  • Start date
N

Nigel Harvey - IT Sys Eng

Hi everyone,

My problem (today) is with a whole bunch of clients at one of our remote
sites that intermittently lose Outlook (corporate/workgroup) connectivity.
The symptoms are either that Outlook does not seem to finish starting up or
that Outlook freezes in mid-use.

Users have Outlook 98/2k/2k3 into e2k3/w2k3 member servers in a w2k forest.
An Outlook 2k3 client running with the RPCDIAG switch allowed that when
contact was lost we could reconnect and Outlook went live again. Reapeated
reconnects showed that a connection was being made to AD servers 1,2 and 4 in
rotation as well as the target exchange server. All clients can ping the
target servers by short name and a /flushdns doesn't change anything. O2k3
clients do not report loss of contact with the exchange server.

All servers are w2k-SP4/w2k3-SP1 and the Exchange servers have the 898060
hotfix applied (did we find out about that 'stunt' with a 12.5k userbase!)

Network connectivity from the two problem sites is:

Site 1: LAN/WAN - LAN to microwave to LAN - was tunnelled end-to-end
from/to Cisco for EIGRP now removed with some relief in the symptoms.

Site 2: LAN/WAN - LAN to 'Internet' to LAN - tunnelled from/to Watchguard
Firebox II hardware.

Packet traces at the server show that the client just suddenly stops
communicating for an unknown reason. I have been unable to get a packet
trace from a failing client (but would putting a hub in the way to get the
trace affect the problem?).

I can not find anything definitive about Outlook connectivity traffic into
Exchange 2003 - any pointers would be appreciated.

Your thoughts and comments would be apprecitaed because this is driving us
stupid and the affected clients crazy.

Oh, PS - OWA works fine, i've seen an OWA mailbox opened and used at the
same time as the client failed!.
 

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