Outlook locking network connection/session?

Question

Scenario:

We have an 'automatic orders' machine sat in the corner running XP with Outlook 2003. Its job is to check for new emails on a specific account, when it encounters one it checks the e-mail body for specific wording to determine which customer it is from (using a macro), then it checks the attachment for specific order codes before parsing the attachment to create a .csv file (which is then e-mailed onto one of the sales team) before importing the .csv into our bespoke ERP/Sales Order system to create an order.

Problem:

Periodically the machine will have symptoms of a lost network connection (unable to connect to any network source). Sometimes after several days, sometimes over a week. Volume of emails/orders processed does not seem to be linked.

Additional info:

• The machines .pst is stored on a mapped network location.
• The .csv created is stored on a mapped network location.
• This is a workgroup, not a domain.
• All network drives are Samba shares from an Ubuntu fileserver.
• Our bespoke system runs from a database (MySQL) Ubuntu server.

Our troubleshooting so far:

• I have switched machines (previous was Win2000) with the same symptoms.
• Restarting the machine FIXES the problem.
• Closing Outlook and then end tasking an Outlook.exe background process FIXES the problem.
• If you close Outlook, without end taking the background process, outlook will not reopen (saying it cannot find the pst file & it will not open any network location).
• Does Outlook have some kind of 'max session' linking it to network activity that is not closing after a mail request? Could Auto-archive be causing this?
• Is there a tool to check/display what each outlook.exe process is doing?

Have not found many ways to troubleshoot this yet, as it is so infrequent...

Answer 1

The first thing you should look into is this. Storing PST's on a shared network location has caused countless issues on my network with drop outs and SAN performance.

I would recommend sticking the PST locally and copying the PST each day using a scheduled job, or a free tool simular to one I have used (Free PST Backup(this tool is very sharewarey, so you can probably find something better)).

Answer 2

Easiest, if hacky, workaround is to use a scheduled job to restart Outlook. Since restarting Outlook fixes the problem, it's gotta be an issue with Outlook, or the scripts you run from it, so good luck getting support on that.

Seems like you'd get the most mileage out of finding a time of day when email traffic is low to non-existent, and schedule an Outlook restart every day at that time. Problem solved, at least until this system catches fire or drops its hard drive, etc. But that's a disaster for another time, and a different question.

Answer 3

Definitely sounds like a network connection issue - Outlook does have a MAPI connection limit of 32 concurrent connections, however seeing as you're not using Exchange this may not be the problem. I can certainly see how this setup may clog your network however.

I would advise the following :

1. Move the .pst locally to the computer. You may not have had an issue in the past, however this doesn't mean that you won't in the future. PST files are notorious for corruption so do yourself a favour and take the network out of the equation.
2. Create a simple batch script to copy the .pst file to your network share and use the task scheduler to schedule it as often as you would like it to run.

If you want to really see what's going on you should try monitoring your network with software like Wireshark which will help you get a better sense of what your network is doing when this issue occurs. A simply method would also be to view the network usage in the Task Manager as well - if you see spiked traffic then writing to the PST on the shared drive is likely the problem.