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Outlook 2010 - Exchange 2003 - can't open ost file, recreating Outlook profile does not help

I have a client that is running Exchange 2003 and has some users with Windows 7 x64 and Office 2010 (32 bit). 1 user that has been working fine for several months suddenly had her Outlook go to a disconnected state today. I can connect to her mailbox through OWA with no problems. No other users (Outlook 2010 or 2003) are reporting problems.

I have tried:

- delete her .ost file and let Outlook recreate. In this case I get a different message saying that the file just created is not an ost file.

- Deleted Outlook profile and created new, several times.

- Turned off cached mode when trying the above.

- Checked the box for always require authentication in the Outlook setup when recreating the Outlook profile.

None of the above have gotten it working. My next idea is to delete her profile off of the laptop and recreate it. We are using roaming profiles so that may or may not help, but I am looking for other ideas.

Thanks for your help.

Scott

Michael Ortega

Is the user on the same private network or VPN connected? If not, are you using RPC over HTTP? If you're using RPC over HTTP do you have the Exchange proxy settings configured in Outlook? Do you have a trusted of self signed SSL cert?

MO

shapv

ASKER

Sorry, should have been clear about that.

This particular user is inside the firewall on the same network as the Exchange server, she is not setup for RPC over HTTP. When she connects from outside the firewall she uses a VPN connection.

However, so far this has only happened today while she is in the office.

uescomp

Do you get an error message when you click on the disconnected/connect etc. Is outlook in offline mode?

Neil Russell

I am assuming that from her laptop you can PING the fqdn of your exchange server? Other servers too? She is connecting to the network ok?

shapv

ASKER

Yes, she connects to the network fine. From her laptop I have her using OWA with the internal server FQDN and it works just fine.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

linraf

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shapv

ASKER

UserComp - When this problem started she was in off-line mode and F9 - got an error "cannot connect to Exchange Server". At this point since I have been trying to fix it Outlook won't start because of the OST errors.

linraf - I will try that shortly and let you know.

Michael Ortega

Did you mention that non cached mode worked or didn't work?

I know you recreated her Outlook profile, but did you kill the old OST(s) as well as purge any other data in the same directory?

MO

shapv

ASKER

Thanks, this solved the problem, although on Win 7 the command was netplwiz.

I deleted some interestingly wrong credentials and her Outlook is now working fine.

Thanks again for your help.

linraf

Glad it helped, just to not though, if you use the run window, control userpasswords2 does wirk on windows 7 also, but not from the search window.
I know that I tend to use the run and search on windows 7 interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.

shapv

ASKER

Interesting, I just tried that and you are absolutely correct. I always just type in the search box and almost neven bother clicking on run. After all an extra mouse click is so much work :)