Symatec Enterprise VPN 7.0.1

[Soulless]

I am running Outlook 2000 on a Windows XP Pro machine. I connect to my Exchange Server at work from home for my email, using a broadband Internet connection and Symantec Enterprise 7.0.1 VPN software.
The problem that I have is Outlook takes about 2minutes to start up (seems to freeze on the outlook splash screen, until eventually the password prompt appears)and connect and then a further 2minutes to disconnect.
I always start VPN software first, make sure I can ping my Exchange Server (which always works), and then load up Outlook.
It used to connect straight away in the past.

What I then found out was that if I went into Control Panel -> Mail, Show Profiles and created a new connection to the server it, I can use that and it will connect straight away first time its used. However when I try to use it a second time, I again get the 2minute delay.

After this I decided it must be an Outlook problem so I reinstalled Outlook and Office. This has no effect.

Can anyone give me any help with this, as it’s really annoying.

 

[AlexIT]

Make sure your log in has valid Exchange credentials. Your machine is trying to validiate whichever user is signed on first, and trying again...until timeout, then bringing up the password prompt. So if you sign in as:

homeuser
home
THISMACHINE

and your Exchange account is validated by:

Joesmith
work
CORPDOMAIN

you can have a long login wait. Solutions are many, try adding the work credentials to your machine login (sign in as \CORPDOMAIN\Joesmith & work, and check the box "Add this password to my user account")

I have EXACTLY the same software configuration and it is almost instantaneous.

Alex