Outlook fails to connect Exchange mailboxes

[pondi]

Hi,

I have an Exchange 5.5 on Win2k Server, this week end I updated my OS to SP4 and my Internet Explorer to 6.0 (all this on my mail server). Next morning 1% of my users could not connect thier mailboxes with Outlook. I use to have this kind of problem and usually I clean the host file on the client, but this time it's ok...
I'm sure the problem is from Exchange, the failure is by machine I mean if anyone connects and configures his mailbox on these few PCs, it fails at connecting to mail server. I reinstalled the profiles, changed the Office version, checked the registry, make a recovery and nothing. I formatted one yet and it's ok. They're all diferent machines (98/XP/2k).
I heard also my european support is making a few tests with NetIQ these last days.

Maybe one of you has any clue...

 

[rdroske]

The exact message they get when it fails might make it familiar to someone. Are they all getting the same one?

 

[pondi]

The message seems like (traduced from spanish actually):
"Unable to expand the folder, it could be a network trouble or the mail server may be out of order for maintenance"
This is the message I have with a Windows 98 Outlook 97, with Win 2k & XP with Outlook 2k, I have the splash screen Outlook and the application fails. I have to kill the task then. If I quit the Exchange from configuration, it's working great with the PST only. But with the mailbox, nothing.
I tried yesterday to quit the proprietary of mailbox and readd it, but no. I changed the Outlook config to make it ask my network profile when starting but neither...

Thanks for answering.
Alex

 

[zbnet]

Check 2 things:

1) name resolution on the PCs that are failing - can they resolve the server name to an IP address?

2) the Primary Windows NT Account for the mailboxes that are failing - it sounds like the NT authentication is failing when these clients attempt to access the mailbox.

 

[pondi]

Thanks zbnet, but:
1) my host file is ok and puts in corespondance the server name and its IP adress, I checked the ipconfig too, ok!
2) I configured Outlook diferently and now is prompting me for my username password and domain when he starts, he can't be missing this...
Maybe I'm thinking in a virus attack, not sure... Normally my antivirus security is very uptodate... I'm lost.

Thanks for suggesting.