Outlook XP locking up

[SidebandSamurai]

Hi everyone.

I was wondering if anybody has had these symptoms.

Recently I have had a user running outlook-xp, it has worked fairly well in the past years. recently in the past couple of days he has had the following symptoms.

1. When outlook is idle it will lock up, the only way to free up the process is to delete it from the task manager. He will then re-open outlook and it will work for a while then it will lock up again.
2. While this person is working in outlook-xp, weather reading or composing/replying to a message, it will lock up. Word is the editor. Again the only way to free it up is to delete it from the task manager.
3. PC was recently updated to protect it against the Confliker worm. All outstanding updates for office and for windows OS were applied. These same updates have been applied to all our machines in the office with no other complaints.
4. I have rebuilt the profile, smart cache is enabled at the administrative console, but I have not configured smart cache on the clients laptop.
5. I have rebuilt the imap cache, this allowed the client to work for about 20 minutes uninterrupted, but the problem came back.
6. Client has a fairly large inbox with over 10,000 messages, he also has sub folders under his in box which are considerably smaller.

Here is the output from the imap cache rebuild

Code: Select all

[root@grumpy ~]# ./imap-cache.sh "Jeff Gardner"
Do you really want to remove the imap-cache for Jeff Gardner (y/N)y
locking mail-account ...
ommodu: The user was modified successfully
killing IMAP-processes for user Jeff Gardner (uid  60537) ...
removing /var/opt/scalix/gy/s/user/g000039/imap-cache ...
do you want to recreate the mailboxcache for Jeff Gardner which can take a while (y/N)y
killing UAL-remote processes for user Jeff Gardner (uid  60537) ...
removing /var/opt/scalix/gy/s/user/g000039/00000v8.ofs ...
recreating mailboxcache for Jeff Gardner....
Building mailbox cache for: Jeff B. Gardner /sbgk,us/CN=Jeff Gardner
Mailbox cache directory:    /var/opt/scalix/gy/s/temp/mbc_prep/105

Inbox                           10695 msgs (811321Kb)
  Repimd                          180 msgs  (11581Kb)
    Costa Rica                      5 msgs     (38Kb)
  Bear Creek                      771 msgs  (38283Kb)
  Robbins v Optimal               179 msgs  (17790Kb)
  Jebianv Engblom                  70 msgs   (4496Kb)
  SBI                             731 msgs  (80597Kb)
  Carlsbad Softball Associat      345 msgs   (4561Kb)
  Stingray v Lupo                 252 msgs  (13497Kb)
  Bayview v Sklar                 687 msgs  (48773Kb)
  Associate Search (10-2007)       24 msgs    (706Kb)
  Speier v Chuang                 173 msgs   (7654Kb)
  VYTS v 610 Coronado             298 msgs  (12490Kb)
  SNGC v St. Ivan                 204 msgs  (14505Kb)
    SP LLC v R&b                   42 msgs  (13615Kb)
    Nuevo Partners v Colson        90 msgs   (8795Kb)
  Pony Express                     73 msgs   (6844Kb)
  CC Wireless v Duchene           392 msgs  (30257Kb)
  Worldtec                        195 msgs   (8638Kb)
  Security Pacific v The Lof      222 msgs  (21141Kb)
  Security Pacific v NY Deli      100 msgs  (21523Kb)
  Pasadena  v Frengal              40 msgs  (12044Kb)
  Haliburton v Air Liquide        154 msgs  (15695Kb)
  Kirchner v Drobac               101 msgs   (9726Kb)
  Ozone                            36 msgs   (2274Kb)
Sent Items                       6059 msgs (234460Kb)
  Deleted Items                   146 msgs   (7398Kb)
    Search Folder                   1 msgs      (1Kb)
    Search Folder                   1 msgs      (1Kb)
    Search Folder                   1 msgs      (1Kb)
    Search Folder                   1 msgs      (1Kb)
    Search Folder                   1 msgs      (1Kb)
    Search Folder                   1 msgs      (2Kb)
    Search Folder                   1 msgs      (1Kb)
  Calendar                       1245 msgs (115450Kb)
  Contacts                        445 msgs     (92Kb)
  Tasks                             2 msgs      (3Kb)
  Sent                           1794 msgs  (65918Kb)
  Trash                          3079 msgs  (63024Kb)
  thatcher                         43 msgs   (5168Kb)
    MAPI Common Views               1 msgs      (7Kb)
    Message Manager                 5 msgs      (4Kb)
    Freebusy Data                   1 msgs      (2Kb)
  Journal                           1 msgs      (1Kb)

Mailbox cache built for: Jeff B. Gardner /sbgk,us/CN=Jeff Gardner
Mailbox cache directory: /var/opt/scalix/gy/s/temp/mbc_prep/105
Total cache data size:   1Gb

omtidyu : [OM 8013] The name/mailnode contains invalid characters

unlocking mail-account ...
ommodu: The user was modified successfully
done!


Your help is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

SidebandSamurai

[SidebandSamurai]

I wanted to post an update to this issue and let everyone know how I solved it.

As it turns out we recently split the offices of the company I consult with between Newport Beach, CA and Carlsbad, CA. At the time the problem occurred the client was in Carlsbad, CA but our data circuit for internet had not been installed yet. The client shares an office with another law firm, and the client was using their internet connection, which is a T1 data Circuit for Internet.

While we were waiting for the installation of the data circuit into this office to be completed, the client was allowed to use the other law firms internet connection to establish a VPN tunnel between the laptop and the office in Newport Beach. Newport Beach is where all the equipment was at at the time the problem came up.

Only when he was connected to the VPN at the Carlsbad Office did this issue occur.

Now you are all wondering how this was solved. Well the client has always used either the Local area network which was a 100MB network or his home network, which was a 6MB connection to the internet. The Data connection in Newport Beach was a single T-1. From what I could tell, the client was not use to a T1 data connection at his work location. Also this T-1 was pretty busy, from the looks of things it appears the other law firm is streaming audio for music which slowed communications from Outlook to the server in Newport Beach. Another clue to this problem was the other law firm complained at how slow their T1 data circuit was and they were considering upgrading their internet connection.

When the problem occurred, that is the locking up of Outlook, he would immediately kill Outlook.exe from the task manager before Scalix Connect could complete its task of communicating back to the home server. He thought that Outlook was hopelessly locked up which was why he intervened by deleting outlook.exe out of his task manager. He would restart Outlook but the problem continued to plague him. This problem never appeared at the Newport Beach office or at his home.

I asked the client to be patient and wait for Outlook to finish what ever task it needs to complete and that it could take a bit since he is only on a T1 and not on his cable modem at home or at the Newport beach office. The Client would not listen to me at first. He kept killing Outlook when it locked up. I asked him to leave it anyway just to see what would happen. Shortly after I spoke with him he got a call from a client which took about 30 minutes to complete. This allowed Scalix Connect to communicate with the server and complete its task, what ever that was. After that communication was completed, control was returned back to Outlook. He told me after he completed the call that Outlook started responding about 10 minutes before he hung up with the client, with out him having to kill Outlook.exe from the task manager.

The problem came and went through out the day, but he just worked with what was happening because of the circumstances. Eventually we got the dual T-1s installed, which is now 3mb in bandwidth, moved the equipment from Newport beach to Carlsbad and he has never had the problem again.

I don't know what communication was required between Outlook connect and the Scalix server, but it took a long time, my guess was some housekeeping communication was occurring at that time which caused Outlook to lock up which gave the client the impression that something was wrong and required his intervention.

Anyway the solution was to leave it alone and it started working all by itself.

Sincerely,

Sideband Samurai

[ronaldlupe]

Things I have done so far:
-Increased page file size
-Defrag
-Virus Scan/Adware.
-Removed any unecessary startup programs
-Performed a Detect and Repair on Office 2003
-Performed a repair of Outlook
-Researched the newest MS KB articles installed dont conflict
-Disabled Norton Antivirus and Restore Point
-googled

[billb3]

Things I have done so far:
-Increased page file size
-Defrag
-Virus Scan/Adware.
-Removed any unecessary startup programs
-Performed a Detect and Repair on Office 2003
-Performed a repair of Outlook
-Researched the newest MS KB articles installed dont conflict
-Disabled Norton Antivirus and Restore Point
-googled

Did you reply to the wrong topic?