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mjburgardFlag for United States of America

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Network issues, RDC data encryption error, Outlook cannot connect to PST file, other network related probelms

I have a developer server with Windows Server 2008 on it that I use as my main workstation.  Its set up to remote into any of the other servers, and I'll test programs and stuff internally on it before I make a change to one of the main servers.  Until recently there was no major issues.  But now the network seems to be having trouble.

When I try to remote desktop into one of the other servers I get the following message withing the first 30 seconds about 90% of the time or more.  To be clear I am able to get in and log on (except when the message comes the second I connect, which might be up to half the time) but just not stay.

"Because of an error in data encryption, this session will end. Please try connecting to the remote computer again."

Sometimes one server will not let me get past the log in screen, while another will work for a few minutes or more, but its not constant which will do what.  The one that was working may become the one that kicks me off instantly.


Another issue that started happening at about the same time is my outlook started having issues.  Half the time or more when I try to open it I get the following message:

"Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. The file O:\Folder\My Name\Outlook.pst cannot be accessed."

The PST file is stored on one of the other servers so it seems like its related.  Sometimes I can get it open (usually after restarting the computer) and it will work for an unspecific period of time (not very long though) before it freezes up or just errors out while doing a send and receive.

It will all give me this pop up bubble in the task bar at times:

"Cannot load personal free/busy data. The file O:\Folder\My Name\Outlook.pst cannot be accessed because another workstation has modified it. Close and then restart all mail-enabled applications. You might need to restart your computer."


In relation to the above, sometimes I have trouble accessing the network shared drives, but sometimes this is not a problem or is always solved with a restart (even when I can't remote to the server the shared drive is on).

The Error I get when I can't accessed a shared folder is:

"An error occurred while reconnecting (Shared Drive letter): to \\SERVERNAME\Folder
Microsoft Windows Network: The local device name is already in use.

The connection has not been restored."

edit:  I also am having trouble with any program that connects to the SQL server, though the error reports I get for those are way to diverse to give a compact overview of them.  Not positive this is related, but it seems to be.

Thanks for the help.

edit2: Having pretty much no trouble with internet though.  Once or twice web pages haven't loaded and had to be refreshed, but nowhere near as often as everything else is happening.  Could easily just be normal internet issues and not related to this at all.
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Scott Anderson
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As you stated, you've got a networking issue going on here.

Does your NIC have any on-board diagnostics to check the function of the NICs themselves & the cabling?
Also, is your NIC using any "offloading technologies" (e.g. TCP offloading (TOE), Receive Side Scaling, or IPv4Large Send Offload)?  If so, disable all of these and see if connectivity improves?
It'd go without saying (although I'll say it anyway), check with your server vendor for any NIC driver updates.  Its possible that you'll need to re-disable the offloading technologies after updating the NIC.
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Tried all the on-board diagnostics and they all came out green.

No offloading technologies are enabled and my NIC driver is up to date (I checked again just to be sure).  Thanks for the help though.
Anything in your Event Viewer:System or Application logs to indicate network issues?
Also, any "network threat protection" type apps installed?  Symantect Endpoint Protection or McAfee Total Protect??  if so, consider uninstalling to evaluate if that's the source of the problem.
Nothing I can find aside from what I already have.  Outlook not connecting to PST file errors and such.  I do have Symantect Endpoint Protection installed, and I'll try messing with that more.  The thing with that is we have it all installed and controlled from a master server so it really shouldn't be causing issues on one computer but not the other.  But I'll mess with it anyway.
Tried just disabling Symantec on this computer but that didn't seem to help, I'll see what I can do from the master server.

Also something I'm not sure I mentioned above, but at points (like right now) when I get the "Outlook can't access my PST file" error and won't open, I can go through the shared drive and get to my PST file just fine, so the path works, but outlook still won't.  Don't know if this helps at all.
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Scott Anderson
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Ok, that's good to know, I'll look into fixing that once I get the network issues taken care off.

Little update, I can conform that the internet is unaffected because right now I'm getting a steady 100% inability to remote desktop or access outlook but I can surf the web just fine.  Normally the other issues are off and on, not constant.

I'll go see what I can do about Symantec.
Ok when I uninstalled symantec it seemed to work (sometimes it just works after the computer is restarted, but not usually for as long as I let it sit). I reinstalled symantec and first noticed that I think we had the 32 bit version installed instead of the 64 bit version, which I figured was related to the problem.  When I installed the 64 bit version it seemed to work but after a little bit and a restart I had problems again.  This time I tried just disabling symantec processes and that seemed to work.  I then started enabling them again to see what one was causing the problem and I was able to enable them all and it didn't stop working.  So I tried restarting again to see what would happen and it didn't work at first, but then did for no apparent reason.  So while I can narrow the problem down to symantec, I can't really seem to figure out exactly what it is cause its not consistent enough to hold down.  I'll keep trying though.
Cool... at least it's corraled down to something specific...  consider checking for updates for you Symantec product.
Its the most current version, made sure of that.  Whatever it is exactly, its a least manageable now, cause I know what I can do if it does get bad again.  I'll keep messing around with it but I don't see me finding the exact answer soon, so I'll mark this as solved unless you have a particular desire to figure out exactly what it is.  Thanks for your help!
Not sure if I can take it much further, although I'd suggest checking Symantec's Knowledge Base for any articles relating to your scenario...  Good luck with it!