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Thread: Possible RPC issue with exchange?

  1. #1
    Senior Member
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    Possible RPC issue with exchange?

    The company that I work as a net admin for just hired another salesman yesterday. My boss wanted me to get him one of our new shiny dell desktops for his business PC. So I take the old one out of the office, put the new one in, configure it blah blah blah. Everything seems to be working fine. I get him logged on, show him how to use everything, tell him about our security policies..the VPN..etc etc. Well he had been here all of about 2 hours when He comes back from a quick lunch and says he can't get into his outlook account. So I go and take a look at it. Everytime I would try to load outlook I got the error:
    Could not connect to your Exchange server. There may be a network problem or your server may be down.

    Funny I thought, I was just reading one of my emails. So I check with everyone else, make sure no one else is having any probs. I load IE. No probs. The following is a list of all the things I have tried. To no avail. I can NOT figure out what the hell it's deal is. So anyone with knowledge of a tip or trick, previous issues like this, sloutions....please help.

    1) I made sure it wasn't a connectivity issue by doing a net use. Success
    2) I mapped a drive top make sure it wsan't a hardware issue. Success
    3) I tried to connect to exchange from the problem mailbox to see if it was a client or box issue. Success.
    4) I set up a exchange client on the server and set up a profile with the mailbox that was having issues. Then I Started changing the RPC_Bind_order entries. This is where it got interesting. Just as I thought, It started hanging. So I ran the Rping app that comes on the exchange CD. I got no response from any of the protocols. So I assume a corrupted RPC support file. So I refresh all the needed RPC files in the system folders. Try everything again....NO DICE!!
    5) So then I think, well...maybe a domain credentials problem. So I clear the use network security on login box. Still no dice.

    I am seriously at a loss here.
    Don\'t be a bitch! Use Slackware.

  2. #2
    AO Ancient: Team Leader
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    It's a shot in the dark so take it as you will.

    1. Delete the user in AD
    2. Clear the user in Exchange System Manager
    3. Recreate the user in AD an hour later to let it propogate, (more if you use Sites and have changed the default replication)
    4. Recreate the mailbox in AD
    5. Leave it an hour or more per 3. above
    6. Try again....

    The Exchange/AD/workstation link is tenuous at best sometimes. I have found that getting rid of the user completely and being patient and recreating it is usually the best _first_ solution.
    Don\'t SYN us.... We\'ll SYN you.....
    \"A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.\" - Thucydides

  3. #3
    AO French Antique News Whore
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    How large is your active directory? You have multiple exchange server? Might take a while for the new user creation to move around your exchange server or AD server if you have a lot of them.
    -Simon \"SDK\"

  4. #4
    Senior Member
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    So I ran the Rping app
    You do know that this is a two way program? You have to run the server portion on one end, and the client side on the other. If you try to rping a machine that is not running the rping server side, it will always fail. If you cannot get an rpc connection to open between two machines with rping it has nothing to do with authentication as it is not an authenticated rping session. That would point to a network issue.

    How large is your active directory? You have multiple exchange server? Might take a while for the new user creation to move around your exchange server or AD server if you have a lot of them.
    We have over 47 exchange servers and close to 60 domain controllers. I can delete an account and find that that account has been deleted from all of the AD servers in our Tier1 site in less than 15 minutes. If you are seeing delays of hours in deleting accounts something is wrong with your AD replication. Nothing replicates between exchange2k servers except for public folder information.

    4) I set up a exchange client on the server
    That is a no-no, http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;266418

    If you can login to that mailbox using those permissions from another client machine it is obviously not a problem with the account permissions or the AD setup. The fact that it worked when you first set it up clears AD in my book.

    Did you try deleting the profile and starting over from scratch? It sounds like a profile issue to me. A lot of times people just create a new profile and leave the old "bad" profile on the machine. This can cause the problem to "move" between profiles. I would suggest deleting all profiles from the client machine and then reconfiguring the profile.

    Also check you DNS suffix search order and make sure that the domain name of the server is listed in the suffix search order. Worst case run netmon on the client machine and the server machine while the client is trying to connect and post that up here. If it is a network issue a netmon capture will point you to it right away...

  5. #5
    AO Ancient: Team Leader
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    I can delete an account and find that that account has been deleted from all of the servers in our Tier1 site in less than 15 minutes.
    That's because you have GC's running, right?..... GC's replicate instantly so there's no surprise there. However, I have found that even if you have GC's on remote sites the replication isn't always as advertized by MS and it sometimes will seem to default to the replication schedule you have in sites and services, (in my case 30 minutes).... OTOH, IIRC, (and it's a while since I reviewed the details), the "round robin" way that the replication takes place means that certain sites, (depending upon the network architecture), can be left for some time un-updated. Thus, for example, if a user in a remote location call because they locked their silly asses out of AD I tend to term serv to the local AD controller to unlock them.

    Did you try deleting the profile and starting over from scratch? It sounds like a profile issue to me.
    I couldn't agree more.... In fact I think I did....
    Don\'t SYN us.... We\'ll SYN you.....
    \"A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.\" - Thucydides

  6. #6
    Senior Member
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    Tiger Shark: Sorry, I forgot about this thread, hehe. I tried what you suggested and worked like a charm. We are only running one exchange server, so I didn't really think that replications etc would be an issue. Note toself. Thanks again fellas for your help. This is my first network admin postition, I'm only in my second year of college, so It's nice to know that there are more experianced people that can help since my experiance lacks a bit.
    Don\'t be a bitch! Use Slackware.

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