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I have an incredibly frustrating user issue that I have been unable to resolve for over a week, any ideas for this would be greatly appreciated.

The user is having troubles using Outlook 2007 to send or receive emails over using RPC over HTTP (Outlook Anywhere) to an exchange server.

Basically what happens, the connection will be establised and the user will be prompted for the username and password, those are submitted and then outlook tries to download emails which fails and the connection to the exchange server will remain unavailable.

The machine can ping and everything to the exchange server there is no connection issue there.

The setup worked fine for him up untill now and also works for possibly hundreds of other users using the exact same settings, also the same settings will work from the users iphone on the same internet connection, and from my own system using outlook. The exchange server has the webmail https feature and that can be logged into and send and receive emails fine.

Steps taken so far:

  1. removing the .ost file for the account and allowing office to rebuild it (fixes the issue for a short period of time, then the same symptons occur)

  2. deleted exchange profile and recreated (no change in issue)

  3. uninstalled all antivirus and firewalls (no change in issue)

  4. removed all cached passwords (keymgr.dll) (no change in issue)

  5. removed all entries from the hosts file (no change in issue)

  6. uninstalled and reinstalled office 2007 (Temporary fix of issue)

Installing Symantec Endpoint Client caused a lot of email scan popups to be displayed, after a reboot this stopped and a scan it picked a few trojans that it removed.

This fixed the issue temporarily as well, the issue is back again now.

I am completely out of ideas now, there seems to be nothing that can be done to fix this issue outside of rebuilding the PC which is a massive pandoras box I don't want to enter with this user.

--- Update ----

Malware scans from multiple products have been run on the machine and all updates were installed.

The real problem with this user is his distance from us, there is no way to supply a spare laptop or rebuild the machine currently.

Mark Henderson
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  • Do you have a support agreement with Microsoft? Which Office Service Pack is installed? – Sim Feb 24 '10 at 01:29

4 Answers4

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I would get the remote user to run the tests on https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/ (choosing Outlook Anywhere) on their machine, and see if it brings up any problems.

Important: Don't use their real credentials on that site. It's a legitimate Microsoft troubleshooting tool, and it's SSL, but I'm incredibly wary of using real details. Set up a dummy, throwaway account, and then delete it when the testing has been done.

Mark Henderson
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I think that rebuilding the PC option is probably your best bet as by the sounds of things the machine can't be trusted. Are you able to provide another clean working machine and then transfer data and apps across from the old machine?

If that isn't possible have you tried an offline malware scan with something like Avira Rescue CD?

Also have you installed the latest service packs and updates for Office/Outlook?

Sim
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I have had the same problem on a number of machines and do not know the answer... Each time I have downgraded to Outlook 2003 then everything works again...

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If you are using exchange 2007 make sure that the client has their certificate downloaded to the pc.