Outlook 2003 connectivity problems to remote Exchange 2003

[John]

I am at a satellite office that connects to an exchange 2003 server via a T1
VPN. We have not had any problems with email until we started to use
Outlook 2003 that came installed on new XP Pro machines. Any version of
Outlook (except 2003) or Outlook express connects to our remote Exchange
2003 server without any problems. Outlook 2003 will connect ok for maybe a
day or so and then it just drops the connection and our users contact me to
say they can't send or receive. Corporate is preparing to install an
Exchange 2003 server locally to solve the problem. However, that won't
happen for a 10 days and I need an answer ASAP for my users. If anyone has
any ideas or suggestions please feel free to throw them out.


Thanks

John

 

[Greg Mansius [MSFT]]

John,

When the users can no longer connect, do they receive an error? If so,
what's the exact text?

Also, are they using cached mode? If so, try online mode for a while (just
to see if it's the synchronization process that's causing the problem).

Finally, Outlook can only connect via HTTP or TCP. If you fail over to Named
Pipes you won't be able to connect. This might explain why you didn't have
this problem before Outlook 2003. If you have an earlier version of Outlook
in the satellite office, try removing all protocols from the binding order
except TCP/IP. Then, see if the same problem occurs. If so, then you are
definitely failing over to named pipes.

Thanks,