Exch 5.5 OWA Hangs on login 1

[albar]

Looked everywhere, found many references to

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=818709

to fix this and have apllied it, am now at a loss.

Win2K server, EXCHANGE server 5.5 SP4, Outlook 2k, 2k3 clients, some Exchange clients.

1)

http://<server>/exchange

2) User gets gold/yellow login screen
3) User is prompted for username / password
4) If user can log in, interface works fine for a short while
5) Normally, user enters username password (step3) and gets a blank screen - nothing happens

domain\username doesn't make a difference
reboot of server temporarily solves the issue.

No events logged, nothing indicated anywhere. After a failure, attempts to stop/restart WEb Services results in failed stop, with Web service in perpetual state of stopping (reboot helps, of course!)

MS is no help, as the product is no longer supported.

All other Exchange services appear to be working fine.

Upgrade to Exhcange 2k3? We currently have an NT box as domain controller, and I believe exchange 200x requires ActiveDirectory, and I understand that going this route is painful at best.

Suggestions besides upgrading?

If none, suggestions about resources/guidelines for upgrading?

Am desperate.

 

[teckystuff]

This wont help you much except to say I have the same problem almost exactly - I have to reboot the server almost daily!

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Your mouse has moved - reboot for changes to take effect

 

[albar]

Resolved with advice gleaned from some source, might have been on Tek-Tips, or another site. Sorry I can't give credit where credit is due

Steps: NOTE yourmailserver means the original mail server
0. Install Win2K and updates on another machine (yourmailOWA) , give it static ip on your lan
1. Set up only Exchange 5.5 on new machine, selecting only OWA
2. Direct the OWA to yourmailserver (Exchange setup asks for)
3. Install at least EXHCANGE Service Pack 3
4. Disable IIS and WebService on yourmailserver (the original mail server)
5. Update firebox/gateway whatever you are using to direct HTTP requests to new ip as set up in step 0 (note - if you host any other internet services on your lan take them into account here - this step might break something that is working fine i.e. may have to move the service to this new machine...)

I did this and have had no problems - I can even check mail with OWA from home via a shared dial-up connection [at a pitiful 21.x bps connect ] on my lan using a 28 mHz Amiga 4000 (IBrowse)!! Hardly any difference than from before OWA broke.

Last thing I want to put here: Inside my work lan, if using OWA, I can only connect to my mail server if I use the name or internal IP of the owa server - I cannot type mail.company.com/exhcange as I would outside the plant. Not a huge issue, but is there a way to resolve this? Thanks.

Hope this is helpful.

 

[teckystuff]

Thanks I will try that too

*****************************************
Your mouse has moved - reboot for changes to take effect

 

[Kruge]

In order to access mail.company.com/exhcange on your internal LAN you need to do one of two things.

1. If your DNS is capable of b eing a Split Horizon DNS server then set it up as such and add the mail.company.com entry with the internal IP address to the internal side of the Split Horizon.

2. (This is how I do it on my LAN) I have a DNS Server to serve my domain DNS resolutions to the outside world (we will call it the external DNS Server) and I have a DNS server to resolve DNS to my LAN (we will call it the internal DNS Server). I have the internal DNS server set with an entry for company.com entries to my internal IP addresses. The external DNS Server points to the public address for company.com.

When a request from the outside world wants to access *.company.com the Internet DNS servers are told to ask my external DSN Server where *.company.com is and they are provided with the public addresses. When a machine from my LAN they first talk to my internal DNS Server which says to go to the internal addresses for *.company.com rather than going to the internet to find out where *.company.com is.

I hope this helps.


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