In data centers many applications are run that must be upgraded regularly in order to keep applications up to date. And in today’s world, anti-virus software is a necessary component of every enterprise’s application environment. Email software, web servers, application servers and database servers are usually the most common applications found in the data center. But over the years software which protects your users, their data and everything else behind the firewall has become another integral component in your enterprise computing environment.

One application that is a must have to run in the same environment as email servers and email clients is anti-virus software.

But the protection that anti-virus software provides can sometimes inadvertently produce problems in your environment as well. Those problems can in particular have adverse effects when running Microsoft Outlook, Express or Exchange server.

One situation that can cause problems for Outlook or Exchange is when anti-virus software is installed or updated.  You may not notice these problems until a user attempts to open a document or tries to start Outlook.

An out-of-date anti-virus program may cause errors when you try to open an Office document or to start Outlook. Luckily your users will receive an error message that indicates that there’s a startup problem with their Outlook application. Sometimes the message will say that a file cannot be opened due to an anti-virus application which is running. Some of the reasons for generating this error message include:

• An incompatibility problem with your email software and an anti-virus application.
• The file that is trying to open may be infected with a virus.
• Or the file is corrupted and has been damaged.

Another error message you may receive when running Microsoft Outlook 2002 can occur during a synchronization process. The error message will indicate that it is Microsoft Exchange server that is reporting the error and that the error happened while synchronization was running in the background. The error message ID may be reported as 0×00040820. You will be able to find more detailed information in the synchronization log.

When you receive this error - 0×00040820 - it is probably due to a problem on the Exchange server related to a MAPI (Messaging Application Programming Interface) operation that cannot be performed. Usually the Exchange server system is also running an anti-virus application that was developed using an anti-virus application programming interface (API). The other error message you may receive is a MAPI time out error message.

Some of the MAPI operations that can cause these error messages include: moving mailboxes, merging mailboxes with Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Merge runtime (Exmerge) or exporting personal folder files (<dot> pst files).

Another MAPI operation that can cause these error messages can occur during the synchronization process of an offline folder (<dot> ost synchronization). Upon synchronization failure the synchronization log will include error messages such as: “Error synchronizing folder”, “80004005”, “Client operation failed” and a reference to the Exchange server information store.

If the problem your email server is encountering is because of an incompatibility with the anti-virus software then you can try updating or upgrading the software to a compatible version. You’ll have to check with each of your vendors to determine which versions are compatible that can be run in the same environment.

If the problem is due to an email dependent file or files that have been identified as being virus infected then you’ll need to update your virus definitions and then rescan your files and probably the rest of your system as well.

If you have the time you should try to determine how the virus was able to infect your server(s). This usually results from either not having good anti-virus protection software in place, not having up-to-date virus definitions or a user, or users, are not following company policies that, if well defined, disallow the downloading or opening of files from sources that are not trusted web sites. Another source of the problem(s) is that one or more of your end users have recently opened email attachments while your anti-virus program was not running.

These are all issues that need to be reviewed with, and email security policies restated to, your end users.

If you establish that your error message is not caused by any incompatibilities or virus infected email file(s) then your problem is most likely one that involves a corrupted or missing email dependent file. In this case you will need to locate and identify which file it is that you need to recover. Hopefully you have been running regular backups.