Outlook hang (Not Responding) issue
Very frustrating problem:
Whenever I enable a specific 3rd party Addon in Outlook 2010, certain tasks take up to 14 seconds to complete. Such as hitting New Mail, the window doesn't come up until 14 seconds later and shows Not Responding while waiting. Hitting Send also does this.
Simply disabling the Addon resolves the issue.
I have gone down multiple avenues to figure out what's happening. Outlook is connecting to an Exchange server overseas (high latency) via Outlook Anywhere. I've installed the private key and monitored NewMail/Send via Wireshark and nothing *appears* to be different (traffic-wise) when having the Addon enabled/disabled.
When running Sys-Internals ProcMon, I see tons of registry Certificate store-type lookups after loading the Addon DLL. This lead me to seeing that the Addon files are signed with an expired certificate, yet we were assured by the Addon maker themselves that no certificate checks are done on load. To make sure, I've also disabled the following options in Internet Options > Advanced >:
1) Check for Publisher's Certificate Revocation
2) Check for Server Certificate Revocation
3) Check for Signatures on downloaded programs
After doing this ProcMon still shows Certificate-store related lookups. I've even tried adding the following registry DWORD:
HKEY_Local_Machine\System\
I've also made sure to disable any type of on-access scanning that the anti-virus software does.
Right now I'm just trying to figure out what exactly is happening when this specific Addon is loaded. Logically, it's a lightweight Addon used to insert text marking in email messages and subjects -- nothing else. I'm not an expert at ProcMon and it produces *tons* of information to sort through, so I could be missing something. The main red-flag that I see when the Addon is enabled is all those Cert-related registry entries that do NOT show up when the Addon is disabled.
Right now I'm trying to get any type of TLS disabled on the Exchange server so everything is done in plain-text as to remove any server-related need to check Certificates. Though this is more of a random guess as my previous captures show nothing abnormal.
Looking for any suggestions on troubleshooting...
Is there a tool that shows me exactly what a DLL is doing? Exactly what Certificates are being checked? Or if?
Thanks
Whenever I enable a specific 3rd party Addon in Outlook 2010, certain tasks take up to 14 seconds to complete. Such as hitting New Mail, the window doesn't come up until 14 seconds later and shows Not Responding while waiting. Hitting Send also does this.
Simply disabling the Addon resolves the issue.
I have gone down multiple avenues to figure out what's happening. Outlook is connecting to an Exchange server overseas (high latency) via Outlook Anywhere. I've installed the private key and monitored NewMail/Send via Wireshark and nothing *appears* to be different (traffic-wise) when having the Addon enabled/disabled.
When running Sys-Internals ProcMon, I see tons of registry Certificate store-type lookups after loading the Addon DLL. This lead me to seeing that the Addon files are signed with an expired certificate, yet we were assured by the Addon maker themselves that no certificate checks are done on load. To make sure, I've also disabled the following options in Internet Options > Advanced >:
1) Check for Publisher's Certificate Revocation
2) Check for Server Certificate Revocation
3) Check for Signatures on downloaded programs
After doing this ProcMon still shows Certificate-store related lookups. I've even tried adding the following registry DWORD:
HKEY_Local_Machine\System\
I've also made sure to disable any type of on-access scanning that the anti-virus software does.
Right now I'm just trying to figure out what exactly is happening when this specific Addon is loaded. Logically, it's a lightweight Addon used to insert text marking in email messages and subjects -- nothing else. I'm not an expert at ProcMon and it produces *tons* of information to sort through, so I could be missing something. The main red-flag that I see when the Addon is enabled is all those Cert-related registry entries that do NOT show up when the Addon is disabled.
Right now I'm trying to get any type of TLS disabled on the Exchange server so everything is done in plain-text as to remove any server-related need to check Certificates. Though this is more of a random guess as my previous captures show nothing abnormal.
Looking for any suggestions on troubleshooting...
Is there a tool that shows me exactly what a DLL is doing? Exactly what Certificates are being checked? Or if?
Thanks
Amit
If disabling 3rd party Addon resolving your issue. You know the solution. Now you need to ask that vendor to provide the fix. There is nothing much you can do from Outlook end, if you have issue with Addon.
ASKER
Amit, I agree with your statement. However, the vendor insists it's nothing on their end. In their defense, we use this addon with multiple networks and do not experience this issue; or if we did, the disabling of "Check for Publisher's Certificate Revocation" resolved. But not in this case...
I suppose I'm looking for a tool or output that proves that its something with this Addon, and not a setting unique to this network/AD Domain.
Thanks for your time.
I suppose I'm looking for a tool or output that proves that its something with this Addon, and not a setting unique to this network/AD Domain.
Thanks for your time.
There are chances of an Addon conflict. However, not easy to troubleshoot. You might need to call MS for this issue. They have tools to troubleshoot this further. I also advise you to check this KB:
http://www.stellaroutlooktools.com/blog/how-to-fix-outlook-not-responding-error/
http://www.stellaroutlooktools.com/blog/how-to-fix-outlook-not-responding-error/
ASKER
I've been able to disable all addons except for the problematic one and still receive the Outlook Not Responding issue.
Based on your link, I ran the "Outlook Product Stability Diagnostic" tool. It did not find any errors after three different runs. Again, I can repeatedly reproduce the problem, but Outlook always recovers after ~14 seconds, so I assume no error log is generated. So this tool did not find anything.
Still looking...
Based on your link, I ran the "Outlook Product Stability Diagnostic" tool. It did not find any errors after three different runs. Again, I can repeatedly reproduce the problem, but Outlook always recovers after ~14 seconds, so I assume no error log is generated. So this tool did not find anything.
Still looking...
I can see you already done L3 level troubleshooting from your end. If this is issue with single machine, I might suggest you to reinstall Office and try again. Finally, call MS Outlook team, if you have that option.
ASKER
It's Enterprise wide. I'm looking into GPO right now; just wish I could narrow it down to something security/certificate/signi
Thanks
Thanks
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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ASKER
Just wanted to close this up:
Issue was definitely Active Directory Roaming Profiles related, which I do not have access to. After working with the Systems team and removing any type of mapped drive for AppData, it seems to have resolved the issue. My guess is it's something about files being cached to AppData, which lived on a network drive, which was then being scanned by our security systems.
While we're still working on the details, this is enough to point in the right direction.
Thanks for any input
Issue was definitely Active Directory Roaming Profiles related, which I do not have access to. After working with the Systems team and removing any type of mapped drive for AppData, it seems to have resolved the issue. My guess is it's something about files being cached to AppData, which lived on a network drive, which was then being scanned by our security systems.
While we're still working on the details, this is enough to point in the right direction.
Thanks for any input
Great, thanks for the update.