Connection Problem

[Wulfdog]

Periodically, users get an error window that pops up when they try to connect to our Exchange Server 2000. This is what the window says. "You Microsoft Exchange Server is unavailable. You can try connecting to the server using the network, or work offline and connect using dial-up networking. The network did not responding in a timely fashion to determine the existence of an Exchange Server, you may try and continue waiting for a response or work offline." Then under the message, there are 3 buttons: "Retry", "Work Offline", and "Help".

Why does this message pop up? Some people get the message (not all the time), and some people don't. Is there a configuration that I have missed?

Thanks.

Nick

 

[wai0251]

I also got this problem. Is that the connection between the outlook and exchange server?

 

[bp1169]

This could be a multitude of problems, and the problem is definitely between exchange and outlook. Most of the time I see this error it is the result of the client not being able to connect to the exchange server by name. First thing to check is to see if you can ping your exchange server by name (not by dns name) For example, if you exchange servers netbios name is mail, type ping mail. If you do not receive replies try to ping the fully qualified domain name. For example, ping mail.domain.com if you receive replies your problem is related to dns entries on the client. I see this error alot because of incorrect dhcp scope entries. When a person goes from scope to scope (a different network) they sometimes receive an ip address but not the updated dns entries. I would recommend testing this by going into contol panel, network. Double click on tcpip-->network adapter and manually input the dns hostname and domain name under the dns tab, then you should be able to successfully ping the server by name only... i.e. ping mail. Depending on alot of factors, this may or may not be your problem, I have seen this to be the main problem in my enterprise when someone cannot connect to our exchange server. Hope this helps.

Kevin

 

[Denny]

I have seen this too and at the Outlook client we changed the order of the protocol that Outlook uses when trying to connect to the exchange server. Tweak the binding order of the client machine. In 2000 drill down in the registry to hklm\software\microsoft\exchange\exchange provider and change the rpc binding order to 'ncacn_ip_tcp'. This will make Outlook us ip/tcp first before trying to bind using spx or some other protocol. The registry key will be different for NT 4.0.
hth
Denny

 

[Wulfdog]

Thanks everyone for the replies!

Nick