Outlook / Exchange Server / slow checking
 

We are running Exchange 5.5 on a NT4 server (yeah, we need to replace it). It's getting pretty cranky these days. Most of that I can deal with, but there's a new issue. The workstations in our office are using Outlook 98 to connect to it, and it is often taking over a half hour for a message to cross our office.

I can't find any setting in Outlook 98 that says "only check for messages every 45 minutes" or anything like that. However, I notice that if I've left Outlook unattended for a while, then open an email or something, I'll suddenly get a pile of emails that have built up, so working in Outlook seems to trigger the "get email" action.

Unfortunately, I can't narrow down the timeframe on when this started to happen, or what may have been changed on the server at the time. Any suggestions on where to look? I've Googled, but I can't find the right search terms to define my problem.

If this is happening all across the domain, its an exchange issue, not outlook. whens the last backup and defrag of the edb?

Backups: nightly. Defrags: we don't have the room left on that drive to even do a defrag. Pathetic, I know.

(just saw the time, I'm bailing out for tonight)

It sounds like your clients are running in offline mode? Check the "send/receive" settings on one of the client machines. Tools, Options, Mail Delivery

Also, if your server's HD is so full you can't defrag the edb you might be having a problem server side. Have you checked the event logs on the server? System and Application. Also reboot the server...(quick and worth a shot)

Sry I can't be more help, but I haven't run exchange on NT in years. (thank god)

Edit: Is there a new firewall? It may be blocking UDP packets sent to update mailbox new mail notification, and clicking on mailbox sends mail send/receive packets which may come on the only port the firewall is expecting to see and allow for client ops.

See here for more coherent

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;264035

Not exactly the same situation as yours since I ran into this on a different platform, but I would check exactly what he mentions above with the firewall setting on the local machine if you are using one. Because as soon as people installed SP2 for xp at my old job this issue started happening all over the place until we realized we needed to make an exception for outlook in the windows firewall. Otherwise, it can't keep an open connection to the exchange server. So if you have a software based firewall I would check it to make sure it allowed outlook to make connections.

The issue we had sounded exactly the same, if you didn't do anything, no mail would show up. If you clicked on a different folder or opened an email though, it would suddenly download all the mail.

Oh - and if you need to run a defrag using eseutil and don't have enough space left on the drive -

you can do it to a different partition. So either add an IDE drive or an external USB drive, or even do it across the network to a mapped drive. It will be slow, but it will work. Make absolutely sure you have a good backup of the store before you do so. Also, this will take extra time than a usual defrag because you are working with the limitations of how quickly the data can move back and forth. If you have a store that is many multiple gigs, plan for the moving of the data to the temp location, and then back from the temp location. I had to do this a bunch of times at my old work as well.

Thing is, I have done this a lot in exchange 2k, but never in exchange 5.5 so I hesitate to go through all the switches as they would be different in some cases. Here's a microsoft article on eseutil though that has some 5.5 mentions.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...Product=exch2k

Oooh, portwineboy, the XP/SP2 firewall sounds like it might be the issue. Nice thinking.

/ goes to test it...

Yup, we have a winner! Thank you muchly.

Bratwurst, I might get back to you with more questions about the Exchange defrag, and mapping to a random user's drive where there's plenty of space. I run the network here, because it is a small office and "I'm the guy who understands computers". I have no actual training, and have to be billable on real work as well.

OK, simular problem here. We have Exchange 5.5 on a Win2K box. Clients run a mix of Win98 and WinXP SP2. On the XP SP2 clients, mail does not send or receive unless you open an email, click a different folder, etc. Windows firewall is turned off but even though it is, I made an exception for it. Still have the same problem, I read somewhere that with XP SP2 the Remote Procedure Call hangs in Outlook XP and is only called when one of the above events happens. It will eventually trigger itself, but I should be able to get the email my boss sends before he gets up and comes to my office to ask me if I have read it yet.

I found 883606 Messages in Microsoft Outlook are not sent immediately in Windows XP Service Pack 2; it doesn't affect my ancient version of Outlook. There's a registry workaround in there.

Heh, after I posted I searche the MS site and found the same article. Great minds must think alike :) However the fix I used was the exact opposite as the one proposed by Microsoft. Instead of turning on the Remote Procedure Call as described in the article, I turned them off and use the User Datagram Protocol. The UDP provides a faster response for sending and receiving the messages. Probably makes extra network traffic, but for 10 people it doesn't make that much difference.

Awesome! Good luck with it.