Outlook Requesting Data

[sinkro]

I'm posting this in an attempt to alleviate any pain someone else might be having with XP Pro and Outlook XP being used over VPN. If you don't know what I am talking about consider yourself luckly. Otherwise you know what I mean when you attach to an exchange server over VPN and have to watch the annoying Requesting data from microsoft...... dialogue box. I found an article describing exactly what I was experiencing, a black hole router.

http://www.outlookpower.com/issues/issue200210/challenge001.html

To make this short I ended up having to adjust my MTU and RWIN on my XP client to make a proper connection to my VPN server. Why this pertains to Outlook XP, I don't have an answer to. I have a ticket open with MS tech support so I'll post what I find out later.
A nice utility to use to adjust your MTU settings is TCPOptimizer at speedguide.net

 

[GTS2K]

Have you found any resolution to this problem? I have a user connecting to our VPN via dial-up and is having the same problem. In the past, one of our salesman, was having the same problem. He was using his home DSL. When I asked him to use dial-up, the problem went away. This led me to assume that it is a connection issue. Can anyone shed some light to this problem.

 

[sinkro]

We did find a solution to the problem. Though its root I believe is specific to our environment since I cannot put my finger on what caused it.
It was caused by some missing registry entries. If they were removed by some software installation I can't say. But once we restored them everything started to work fine.
The key is
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Rpc\ClientProtocols]
under this there should be four entries.
ncacn_np rpcrt4.dll
ncacn_ip_tcp rpcrt4.dll
ncadg_ip_udp rpcrt4.dll
ncacn_http rpcrt4.dll
We only had the ncacn_np entry, which means that the client was only using named pipes to communicate with the exchange server. Aside from this, the reduction in the size of the MTU will help for people communicating over VPN.
Hope this helps.

 

[stiffguy]

Hello:

I have the same problem. I have XP pro and SBS2003. I use Outlook 2003. What happens in my case is as follows:

Hi:

I have my server running SBS2003. I connect to my server using VPN connection. VPN gets connected. I try to invoke Outlook 2003 and after it comes up , it displays the mail on the window and with in coupld of minutes, outlook displays the message " Outlook is trying to retrieve messages from Microsoft Exchange SERver" . then with in few seconds, it displays " Connection to Microsoft SErver is lost ", though the VPN connection is in tact. also at the bottom of the outlook screen, it says "diconnected" . Again my VPN icon is in tact and I am econnected.

I have to close Outlook 2003 , ( most of the time, I have to abort Outlook 2003 as it does not respond ) and disconnect the VPN, connect again VPN and try outllook 2003. Then it may work or try all over again the same.

Can any one please let me know how to get over this problem ??

Thanks

 

[prha]

Try disabling firewall and see if this helps. If so then check your firewall config and make sure your exchange server is trusted. I had this problem, and was solved by reconfiguring firewall.

 

[stiffguy]

Hi Prha:

U mean disable the firewall on the router which is at the client side????

Please clarify. I have router both on the client as well as the server side.

Thanks

 

[prha]

The client side.
Unless all your remote users are experiencing the same, then it could be the server side router.

Most likely to be the client side though.