Microsoft Exchange rejecting logins

Question

I have Microsoft Exchange 2010 running on Windows 2008R2 - 64 Bit.

I had Microsoft Outlook 2007 clients connected and logging in just fine. Some time has passed and now my outlook clients are not able to connect. I've tried removing and recreating outlook login and when I do so and open outlook and try to expand the Inbox related to the Exchange server I get the following error:

The set of folders cannot be opened. Microsoft Exchange is not available. Either there are network problems or the Exchange computer is down for maintenance.

There are no network problems. Everthing is on same network switch and outlook can ping the Exchange server by hostname and FQDN. Again, this was all working. I do have Norton antivirus and tried disabling that.

I went down several rabbit holes on this one. I read an article about chimney effect/bug, default gateway bug for outlook (registry fix) and none of these things corrected my issue.

Lastly, I tried setting up outlook without using offline files and without using Exchange cache mode. Under the account set up under Control Panel -> Mail, under the General tab I changed the connection to "Manually control connection state" and from automatic and set it to "Connect with network". Under same dialog box but under Advanced, I removed the check mark next to "Use cached Exchange mode" and clicked the offlinne folder file settings and disabled offline use.

I still get strange behavior. Now when I run outlook and try to expand the Inbox related to exchange, I get:

The set of folders cannot be opened. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile before you can synchronize your offline folder file.

I also deleted all .OST and .PST files and restarted outlook with no luck.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Great question/test, Yes OWA works. I'm able to login with a typical user account and see their Exchange Inbox. — Kilo, Oct 26 '10 at 17:55
Anything interesting in the event log? Also, how's Active Directory - stable and working? You didn't specify, but I assume by your referring to it as "the" server it's the only Exchange server - is that the case? — Ben Pilbrow, Oct 26 '10 at 18:37

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 26 '10 at 18:03

1

Run Test-ServiceHealth in the Exchange Management Shell to check whether all required services are started. If any are not started, start them and see if the problem has gone away.

Try logging onto Outlook Web App to see if the problem persists there, or whether it's just Outlook playing up.

Have you applied any patches recently (Exchange, Windows, Outlook) that might be causing problems (unlikely it is that a Windows Update will cause problems, it's always worth checking).

answered Oct 26 '10 at 18:03

Ben Pilbrow

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Thanks, that helped fix it. The ExchangeRPC and ServiceHost were not running as were a couple others. I guess I over looked this when I rebooted the box and didn't see any Event logs pertaining to failed services. The Test-SErviceHealth help me identify required services that were not running. – Kilo Oct 26 '10 at 18:44

Microsoft Exchange rejecting logins

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