problem with Outlook making a network connection?

[Cary W. Shultz]

Good afternoon!

I have not seen this one before, but it is happening. Here are the details
(brief):

*Client has e-mail hosted off-site (horrible company, moving to Exchange in
the summer)...hosting party just moved the mailboxes from an overtaxed
server that was causing a lot of problems to another server this passed
weekend.
*We have updated the host 'mail' record in the FLZ on the internal DNS
Servers in this environment to reflect the change in IP Address (from
xxx.xxx.xxx.26 to xxx.xxx.xxx.21).
*all users in the environment are using Outlook 2003 SP2 running on Windows
XP Pro SP2 and the .pst file for each user is located on the Server
*no issues -EXCEPT- with two users.

That issue is that they are not receiving e-mails with any consistency. We
have done the following:

*verified that on the server we are able to ping both 'mail.mydomain.org' as
well as 'mail'. We are. And, the correct IP Address is returned
(xxx.xxx.xxx.21).
*verified that on the client in question we are able to ping both
'mail.mydomain.org' as well as 'mail'. We are (correct IP Address
returned).
*verified that the user has access to the .pst file.
*verified that the user has access to the Internet.
*run a repair installation of Office 2003.
*checked the event logs - absolutely nothing!!!!!!!

When we go into the Outlook client and go to Tools | E-mail Accounts |
Change and then click on "Test settings" it fails at the first step - verify
network connection.

Anyone have any ideas on what caused this and how to resolve it?

Thanks,

Cary

 

[F.H. Muffman]

That issue is that they are not receiving e-mails with any
consistency. We have done the following:

*verified that on the server we are able to ping both
'mail.mydomain.org' as well as 'mail'. We are. And, the correct IP
Address is returned (xxx.xxx.xxx.21).
*verified that on the client in question we are able to ping both
'mail.mydomain.org' as well as 'mail'. We are (correct IP Address
returned).
*verified that the user has access to the .pst file.
*verified that the user has access to the Internet.
*run a repair installation of Office 2003.
*checked the event logs - absolutely nothing!!!!!!!

When we go into the Outlook client and go to Tools | E-mail Accounts |
Change and then click on "Test settings" it fails at the first step -
verify network connection.

IMAP or POP? Can you telnet to mail.mydomain.org 110 (or 143 for IMAP)?
Can OE (or other POP/IMAP client) connect and download mail? Is there a
web client that you can use to verify that there is actually mail there?

 

[Cary W. Shultz]

Sorry,

Should have commented that this is POP3 and that there is indeed a web
interface that confirms that there is indeed e-mail in the mailbox that has
not made it's way into the Outlook Inbox and that I am able to telnet into
the server.

We have not yet tried OE.....kinda wanted to avoid doing that......but would
definitely verify that there is an Outlook issue.

Thanks,

Cary

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Should have commented that this is POP3 and that there is indeed a web
interface that confirms that there is indeed e-mail in the mailbox
that has not made it's way into the Outlook Inbox and that I am able
to telnet into the server.

We have not yet tried OE.....kinda wanted to avoid doing
that......but would definitely verify that there is an Outlook issue.

Just to be 100% sure, by 'tenet into the server', are you telnetting into
110, or just to a shell account?

As for other POP3 client, I'd recommend going with one you are intimately
familiar with, so you can be 150% sure you check the 'Leave a copy of mail
on server' box. However, if you're comfortable doing POP3 stuff in telnet,
just do it in telnet, it's roughly the same thing.

Is there any discernable rhyme or reason as to when Outlook does manage to
download mail? Is it only at startup/login of the machine?

 

[Cary W. Shultz]

F.H.,

I am telnetting correctly. Just open up a command prompt and enter 'telnet
mail.mydomain.org 110'. I can do this at the machine in question, at any
other machine in their environment or at any machine here ( we are
consultants and we can remotely access any machine in their
environment....just to explain that last part!).

I can telnet in to do 'the mail stuff' or use a pop3 client (like OE). And,
thanks for the tip on 'leave on the server'. Knew that one (learned the
hard way about six/seven years ago!) but someone else reading this post
might not!!!!!

As to when Outlook eventually does get the e-mail ----- there is no
discernable rhyme or reason. I can send from her outlook and it goes
immediately (okay.....I did not know that when I initiated this post). It
is the receiving that takes awhile. For example, two hours ago I sent her a
test e-mail from her account (Outlook). During the 15 minutes or so that I
was remotely controlling her computer that e-mail did not come in. Just 20
minutes ago I was remotely controlling her computer again (she is at lunch)
and that e-mail was sitting in her Inbox. One thing that I did notice that
is interesting is that if you look in her Sent Items that e-mail was sent at
12:03PM today. If you look in her Inbox she received it at 12:00 PM. Not
sure how that is possible....

The time on her computer is derived from the DC that holds the FSMO Role of
PDCEmulator for that child domain, which gets its time from the Forest Root
DC (either the one that holds the PDCEmulator role or the other one), which
in turn gets its (Forest Root PDCEmulator) time from Virginia Tech's atomic
clocks. Those times are all the same....which, BTW, is just a few seconds
ahead of my computer here in the office (workgroup here in the
office....thus, the difference).

Thanks,

Cary

 

[F.H. Muffman]

I can telnet in to do 'the mail stuff' or use a pop3 client (like
OE). And, thanks for the tip on 'leave on the server'. Knew that
one (learned the hard way about six/seven years ago!) but someone
else reading this post might not!!!!!

Good, I've run into too many people who would 'connect to the server' but
that only meant browsing a share. Trust but verify. =)

As to when Outlook eventually does get the e-mail ----- there is no
discernable rhyme or reason. I can send from her outlook and it goes
immediately (okay.....I did not know that when I initiated this
post). It is the receiving that takes awhile. For example, two
hours ago I sent her a test e-mail from her account (Outlook). During the
15 minutes or so that I was remotely controlling her
computer that e-mail did not come in. Just 20 minutes ago I was
remotely controlling her computer again (she is at lunch) and that
e-mail was sitting in her Inbox. One thing that I did notice that
is interesting is that if you look in her Sent Items that e-mail was
sent at 12:03PM today. If you look in her Inbox she received it at
12:00 PM. Not sure how that is possible....

So, if you do a Send Receive, does it pull the mail down right then, or does
that sometimes fail too? If that sometimes fail, I'd probably do a network
trace and see whats happening on the connection.

I just pinged someone else regarding the time and, we aren't sure, but, if
you ask me, empirical evidence says that Outlook uses the RFC2822 headers to
determine the Received time (which should be easy to verify, select the
item, right click, options, and check the internet headers... that date/time
should be in there) so I'd bet the POP server's time is ~3 minutes slow =).

 

[Cary W. Shultz]

F.M.!

Sorry for the delayed reply.

To answer your first question (send/receive) - that would fail EVERY time.
Well, that makes sense now. Sorta.

This was another example of IXWebhosting have massive e-mail issues. They
were suffering from a huge queue.

So, it turns out that these two users were not the only ones affected. I
ended up calling IXWebhosting because everything that we were doing was
yelling server-side error/problem but everything I was hearing from our
client was "only a couple of users". We are in the process of moving
everyone away from IXWebhosting as quickly as possible. Sorry, not trying
to flame this company but things have been really really really bad the last
three / four months.

I *think* that the POP Server is a bit more than three minutes slow!!!!!!

Anyway, thanks for your help.

Cary