Outlook 2000 Profile-Based Problem

[Guest]

I have a recurring issue with one user (a manager) that is rather odd. I
recently requested and received an upgraded PC for her. It was imaged from a
standard build. When she logged into the PC, she was unable to view the
contents of her Inbox, the pane is blank and displays nothing When the status
bar is enabled, it indicates there are actual contents in her Inbox. All
other folders in Outlook were viewable as normal and display contents. I
checked to see if there were any filters/rules applied. I then opened Outlook
using the following switches:

/cleanviews
/cleanreminders
/cleanprofile
/cleanrules
/firstrun
/nocustomize

I also deleted and recreated the user's Outlook profile. I also deleted and
recreated the user's NT profile on the PC.
Nothing worked. There was another upgraded PC that had arrived in for
another user so I figured to save time I'd set her profile up on that one
instead but unfortunately ran into the same situation. I followed the same
troubleshooting steps listed above. I had to get the user up and running on
something so I doubled the RAM in her current PC which has satisfied her to
some extent. Outlook on her regular PC displays the contents of her Inbox.
In the meantime, as an experiment I had two other users log into the two
PC's and set up their profiles. They are able to view the contents of their
Inboxes. I also logged in and didn't experience issues myself but that's not
a fair comparison as I am the domain admin here.
Today I had to log the user into a laptop that I received as a replacement.
It's imaged from the same build as the PC's. All of our PC's are imaged from
the same build. The user needs to borrow the laptop next week to present at a
lunch 'n learn. To my surprise, when I decided to test Outlook with her
profile, I ran into the exact same problem yet again.
Have anyone seen this problem before? Have you got any ideas/suggestions on
what I can do to fix this issue? I think I may have exhausted what I know to
troubleshoot. I'm drawing a blank on what steps, if any, I can take.

 

[Guest]

Hi KOrland,

Is the client is connected to Exchange, if so, is she delivering to mailbox
or PST. Either way, try to import the mail into a new PST file and test.

If she is delivering to mailbox, the mailbox may be corrupted, try backing
it up and recreating it.

Another thing, I know cleanviews should actually do this but have you
confirmed that her Views are correct for the Inbox.

Are you also viewing the Inbox from the Outlook bar or from Folder list (If
I can remember correctly, those were in Outlook 2000). Try to view it from
the one that you are not using.

Anyway, let me know the solution if you do get it .

--
Lee-Anne
Microsoft Office Support Engineer
BTG on behalf of Microsoft CSS (South Africa)
Tel: 0860 2255 67 (CALL MS) (South Africa only)

 

[Guest]

This is an Exchange environment and we have no PST's in use.
I have solved the problem however. The mailbox was corrupted. Looks like it
occurred some years ago, there were many corrupted emails dating back to 2002
and earlier.
I tried to copy the contents of the Inbox to a folder I created and I was
reasonably successful, but the empty Inbox then showed that it had (-2) new
emails and over 4 billion (yes BILLION) emails in the inbox. The same thing
happened with Sent Items.
I couldn't take the mailbox offline and I couldn't export the contents to a
PST if they were corrupted because I would be in the same boat. There's a
right way to fix the problem and a quick, dirty, and easy way. Exporting to a
PST is the quick, dirty, and easy way. The right way was to fix everything
through the Exchange database. Because the corruption went back so far,
there was no way to recover the data from backup as my backups only go back
two months (I have deleted item retention set up for 30 days), besides I
don't run brick level backups.
I was able to turf the corrupted items via the database. Then I exported the
email to a PST. I renamed her old mailbox by renaming the alias, the display
name, and the email addresses. I then hid the mailbox. I created a new
mailbox for the user, added the PST, then copied the contents of the PST
Inbox to the mailbox Inbox, contacts to contacts, sent items to sent items,
etc.
The final test was to log her onto a different PC to see if her Outlook
profile loaded correctly, which it did.