outlook.ost - apparent corruption

[Jim Hatfield]

I have two users, both with HP laptops, both running XP Pro,
both with Outlook 2003 talking to an old Exchange 5.5 server.

Outlook is running in "cached exchange mode" which as I
understand it is a combination of the old Outlook 2000 online
and offline modes.

On occasion, with no apparent cause, they lose the ability to
send mail - it remains in the outbox. The status bar at the
bottom right cycles round between "all folders are up to date"
and "contacting exchange server" and "receiving data" - I may
not have these exactly right since the machines are in another
country and I only occasionally have remote access to them.

It looks for all the world like they have connectivity problems
with the Exchange server, but there is no other evidence of that
and nobody else on the same Lan has any problems.

It seems as if the real problem is caused by errors accessing
the outlook.ost file. If I rename this, when Outlook starts it
gets rebuilt (often ending up a fair bit smaller than before) then
all is sweetness and light for a while, except that the mails
which were in the Outbox are now gone since they are in the
renamed .ost file. I can fix this by dragging them onto the
Desktop before I rename the file and then send them after it's
rebuilt.

But this has now happened to one person within hours of me fixing
it - before it was weeks, so I now really need to find the cause.

Any input will be gratefully received. I've trawled this newsgroup
for ".ost" but nothing really matched what I'm seeing.

 

[Jim Hatfield]

I have two users, both with HP laptops, both running XP Pro,
both with Outlook 2003 talking to an old Exchange 5.5 server.

Outlook is running in "cached exchange mode" which as I
understand it is a combination of the old Outlook 2000 online
and offline modes.

On occasion, with no apparent cause, they lose the ability to
send mail - it remains in the outbox. The status bar at the
bottom right cycles round between "all folders are up to date"
and "contacting exchange server" and "receiving data" - I may
not have these exactly right since the machines are in another
country and I only occasionally have remote access to them.

I now have FOUR people all experiencing this problem. All are
running Outlook 2003 talking to an Exchange 5.5 server in a
remote office (via a Lan to Lan VPN) and using a direct
Exchange connection, ie not IMAP.

In all cases, renaming outlook.ost and letting it get rebuilt
fixes it. They have to remember to drag the unsent mails to
the Desktop first since obviously they don't exist in the
rebuilt file. The problem is this takes a long time since the
file gets quite big.

I'm amazed nobody else has seen this. I don't know how to fix it,
but I plan in the future to replace the Exchange 5.5 server with an
Exchange 2003 server, once the 16Gb storage limit on the Standard
version is lifted, and I hope that this will finally cure it. Until then
I'm advising people to install Thunderbird as an IMAP client so
that they can keep accessing mail while the outlook.ost file is
rebuilt.