Strange Outlook 2003 starting problem...

[JPFSanders]

I have a SBS 2003 server, it has 5 users all of them have mailboxes of different sizes, some small some big.

Two users work remotely via Cisco VPN, the rest work in the office.

Of the two remote users one of them always work remotely and never had an issue at all, he has a huge mailbox and even opens three other mailboxes at the same time.

However the remaining remote user is experiencing one weird and quite annoying issue, when he opens outlook (specially over the VPN), it displays (Not Responding) and stays frozen showing the hourglass for at least 8 mins before becoming responsive again and show the inbox. After becoming responsive again Outlook does work perfectly.

On the local lan sometimes it takes 20 seconds and some others as long as over the VPN.

Now the funny thing, if I open any other mailbox using this guy's computer over the VPN or the Local LAN it all works just fine and outlook takes just 5 seconds to show the inbox.

I tried to delete the mailbox from Exchange and created a new empty one. Exactly the same result, even with the empty mailbox it takes ages to open.

Does anyone else have seen this behavior? He's using Windows XP and Outlook 2003 like the rest of the guys in the office, and the same VPN client as the other guy.

I'm losing sleep over this, as always the guy with problems is the one paying :-/

The only thing I haven't tried yet is to create an entire new user and mailbox, and see what happens when I log in as this new user and try to open the mailbox...

Any suggestions are welcomed.

 

[gavm99]

A basic suggestion would be to ensure he using the latest Service Pack for Office but I realise for your intial testing it points away from this as other mailboxes are ok.

I think doing anything like an Exchange defrag would risk breaking things for all the other users.

How about logging on to his computer as a different user (such as Domain Admin) and configuring Outlook to open his Mailbox from there - what happens?

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[JPFSanders]

@gavm99

Yes, all the clients are up to date and running SP3 + latest patches.

And to answer the admin user question yes if I open the mailbox as an user with admin rights it runs quick and nice.

It is when this particular user opens his mailbox.

Of all the weird things I have ever seen Outlook do, this is the most strange one so far.

I swear there is nothing special about this guy (other than being the boss) he is not even member of any domain group other than the company's wide distribution list which other people are as well.

 

[gavm99]

This is indeed a very strange one.

How about him logging on to a different machine? Does the same occur? This way we can rule out it being the local machine.



Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[JPFSanders]

@gavm99

That was my first thought (based on past Outlook experiences) I tried accessing from a different computer and the problem still happens.

I brought his latpop home and I have been running all imaginable tests.

Any user can open his mailbox fine but him, and the stupid thing is that he can also open any mailbox just fine.

Last thing I have tried is to create a new user from scratch and try to open the mailbox via VPN, as I suspected it does work perfectly, (with an empty mailbox though). I will export and import his emails to the new user/mailbox and see what happens once the mailbox is full.

Fingers crossed...

 

[gavm99]

I think your plan makes sense and I hope it works for you.

Let us know how you get on.

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[noveyron]

If he has a large number of items in his root inbox rather than in inbox subfolders, get him to create some subfolders and get as much mail out of the root inbox as you can.

 

[rjs]

Also, check Caching at the client level. If caching is on, turn it off. Close Outlook and restart. If it is off, try turning it on.

R.Sobelman

http://www.tracklogins.com

 

[robmazco]

something gnawing at me is oddly enough maybe a plugin, like itunes or something like that?

 

[JPFSanders]

@noveyron

Done that already, I already moved everything into folders.

However I even tried to empty his mailbox and still takes 10 mins for outlook to be responsive.

@rjs

Tried both with cached mode and without caching mode and still the same.

@robmazco

He has itunes (evil app by the way) on both his computers however I can tell you it is not the cause because I tried from some other employee's computer and also from a brand new laptop (just joined it to the domain) from my own house.

 

[JPFSanders]

Hi all,

Many thanks for your help it has been greatly appreciated as I was truly banging my head against the wall.

I haven't managed to fix it, the problem simply does not make sense or does not conform to the typical outlook-exchange problem.

I suspect there is something wrong about his user id on the Domain.

What I have done is to dump this guy's mailbox to a pst using outlook 2003, run scanpst on it to be sure it's fine and then create a brand new username on the domain with a brand new mailbox.

Then I proceeded to open outlook with the empty mailbox, from both home and the office, unsurprisingly it does open in a snap.

Then this afternoon I imported the pst back into the new mailbox, and surprise! surprise!, it still does open in a snap, even considering the new mailbox is now a whooping 6gb.

So what I will do is to change all his computers to the new account and hope it doesn't reproduce again.

If I have time this weekend, I'll try to run a sniffer to capture what the hell is outlook transmitting with the email server, when it is unresponsive, on the VPN client I can see it does transfer several megabytes.

Thanks again to all involved.