Mailbox refresh problem with Exchange 5.5/Outlook

[inquisitor]

I am having an intermittent problem with mail refresh or delay using Exchange 5.5 sp4 on a Win2k sp2 advanced server, and our mail client, which is Outlook 2000. What happens is sometimes emails don't show up in the user's inbox until they click on another email, hit F5 to refresh, or click on one of their personal folders in the folder list. It is intermittent, so I can't make it happen at will. It happens with both internal and external emails. There is no queueing in the MTA or IMC. We only just started having this problem once we upgraded our exchange server to another box. The old server was running exchange 5.5 sp3 on NT 4 sp6a, but was seriously underpowered (single 500 w/256mb vs dual 733 w. 2gb on the new server). Both had mirrored OS drives on scsi with a separated raid5 array connected to a separate raid controller. The old server is still online, part of the same site, but all mailboxes have been moved to the new server. One domain. We have about 100 users using this server so it has lots of horsepower for the job. The problem seems to be worse with internal emails than emails that come in externally through the firewall to the mail server. The mail server is behind the firewall, but not in a DMZ.

I have read about some other people having similar problems with their outlook/exchange server, but no answers as of yet..HELP!!!!

 

[aliciaJ]

inquisitor -
I don't know if it'll help or not - but I saw this happening to my email and my boss's email, but not that of my co-IS people - nor any calls from "regular" email users. (Intermitten, like you're describing.)

We were running 5.5 and had multiple email sites. We were configuring a new 5.5 server at our corp office to be shipped out to a remote office. We installed, Exchange, set up site connectors, etc... We turned the server off and it sat in our office for about a week before it shipped out. During the time that the connectors were in place and "active" in our total exchange organization but the site was "down" (sitting on our floor turned off) - I had this exact intermittent problems. Wild stuff - drove me crazy.
We happened to turn the server back on to do something before we shipped it out and those problems quit! Go figure.

So - while the server was to be turned off again for shipping, we deleted the unnecessary connector and everything was fine with my (and my boss's) email. (We just recreated the site connector when the server was installed at the remote site.)

SO - perhaps you can delete all connectors to the old server and even remove that server from your organization and site if it is no longer needed.

I don't know if this will help - I only suggest this from experience - no "logical theory", nor have I seen any tech info on it anywhere...

Good luck and if you would, let me know if this works if you try it!
Thanks,
aliciaJ

 

[inquisitor]

Alicia

Thanks for your experience... my issue is a little different because we only have one exchange site set up, with 3 servers in the site.. There are 2 separate NT Domains within this site, one has one exchange server on it ( a failover server, on a different feed and a physically different site), and the other domain has 2 exchange servers. One is the old server, the other is the new server that houses all the mailboxes. The problem didn't occur until the new server on the main Domain was put into production. The problem existed when there was only 2 exchange servers in the one exchange site on the primary domain, before the third failover server on the secondary domain was introduced. There are no site connectors because we only have one site, but there are MSmail, ccMail, and Internet mail service connectors for the 3 aforementioned servers... I do want to take the old server in the main domain offline, and see if that helps, so thanks for your advice...


Thanks again, if you have a

 

[ChadStiller]

I have encountered this before with a similar environment and found that the the network card in the Exchange server was the culprit. It was a low end 3COM NIC, but no other network services seemed to have problems. Once it was swapped out with a better card, in my case a server class 3COM, the email delivery/refresh issue went away.

Hope that helps -

Chad Stiller, MCSE
Ramcom Technology
cds@ramcom.com