Outlook 2003 with "Your exchange server is unavailable" prompt

[marcos38]

Hi,

Desperate to find a solution to a weird problem that befallen on me this week.

My clients (W2K Workstations) running Outlook 2003 connecting to a Exchange 2k server are suddenly giving me problem when i start them. They have been working fine for the past 6 months. The following are the symptoms:

1. When starting OL2003, It stayed at the OL2003 splash screen for a long time (2min+) before prompting that "Your exchange server is unavailable" giving me the option to , or

2. Upon retry, after another round of long wait it will then get in successfully

3. Recreation of a new profile gives me a long wait after i key in Exchange server hostname and username and press
(Tried with IP addr of the Exchange server too with similar problem)

4. No problem with
- Ping-ing with IP addr, hostname and FQDN
- NSLookup for the Exchange server

5. A entry of the FQDN of the exchange server in the host table didnt help

5. OWA version works perfectly fine

6. Outlook 98 on my other server works fine

7. No error log entries in the event log

I have exhausted all known options to me to troubleshoot this hair pulling problem.. can anyone out there help?? Thanxs

 

[marcos38]

More food for thought.
What could cause Outlook 2K3 to have problem looking up the Exchange Server?