I am in contact with system administrators, network administrators and email administrators from multiple corporations on a daily basis. Quite often I hear from administrators or their higher level directors that some of their applications are running slow.

We’ll start off with a series of diagnostic techniques that will include testing their network connections, verifying that all patches and updates are in place and then monitoring and measuring user response times with specific tools targeted at their applications.

Email applications such as Outlook will invariably slow down over time and often the problem is identified as a memory issue. The simplest solution is to throw more memory at the problem but that also involves more money, something that most companies try to avoid as a possible solution. Especially in these times of constrained budgets, budget cuts and longer, more involved approval cycles with lower and lower management-required-signature purchase thresholds.

So when a slow response time for an email application has been determined to be related to memory leaks it will be followed by a sigh of relief that the company will not require additional monies to correct this issue.

When an admin receives multiple notifications that Outlook has reached a high watermark with respect to their virtual memory limits then the admin can sometimes take corrective measures such as closing down more than a couple of other applications to free up that memory. Sometimes an admin may also need to disable some of the add-ins that are running in Outlook.

Some add-ins have a search capability which can gobble up memory like a hungry man on Thanksgiving. This issue can be indicative of an inefficient garbage collection process within an application and only remedied by going back to the software vendor with data and application scenario so that the vendor can reproduce the problem on their end. Most C# code is managed and garbage collected but sometimes the cleanup process may not be running as efficiently as possible. So further review of the code is needed and hence a good data set and description of the environment will help in the vendor diagnostics.

Continue reading How to solve Outlook Memory Leak Issues

Outlook is a great tool for exchanging emails with friends and co-workers. Lots of times we send emails that are important enough that they need to be printed out and taken to business meetings and we usually taking the process of printing a document or email for granted.

But when we can’t print out an otherwise unimportant email then all of a sudden that print job takes on much higher priority in our lives.

Other times we are able to print out a much needed document for an important meeting and rush to grab it, run down the hall, plop ourselves down at the conference table and then start passing out copies only to discover that our print job appears discolored, grayed out or lighter in appearance than normal. We curse and say that we will never use that printer again. But later we find out that the problem was never with the printer but with problem with Outlook, particularly with Outlook 2007.

In Outlook 2007, there was a bug discovered related to color categories and printing which resulted in darker colors being printed lighter than normal.

Outlook allows the user to be able to assign Color Categories which adds another dimension to organizing your data or, in the case of email, organizing your email contents. Color Categories give your end users the ability to categorize their emails, contacts or appointments. Folders can then be created based on those categories and then filled with email messages which fit those categories. (Unfortunately IMAP accounts are not supported.)

Now let’s get back to the dark colors being printed much lighter than otherwise expected problem.

Continue reading Troubleshooting Outlook Printing Problems

Occasionally sending and receiving emails can pose problems for end users. One of the more serious problems is when users are unable to receive their email messages.

A sample error message related to being unable to receive emails is the following:

“Outlook is unable to connect to your outgoing (SMTP) email server”

This error message can occur if Outlook is trying to retrieve email messages from a Post Office Protocol (POP3) email server. It can also be produced if Outlook is trying to retrieve email messages from a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) email servers.

It is also possible that you may receive the error code 0×80042109 along with the above error message. This can happen if an end user is attempting to send a message via an email server and they are then asked to provide their login credentials. However, if the OK button is clicked again it will only result in another login prompt being displayed. And, instead of selecting the OK button, if the user hits the Cancel button then the following error message is displayed:

Task ‘<SMTP server name> – Sending and Receiving’ reported error (0×80042109): ‘Outlook is unable to connect to your outgoing (SMTP) email server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).’

A workaround for this problem is to create a new profile for the user account. The current email server is not responding to the existing user’s profile. A new profile will correct this problem.

Continue reading Troubleshooting Error Code 80042109

It is to most end users’ benefits to have the ability to work in an off-line mode. We frequently see people working away on reports or email while traveling on airplanes or working in places that do not have internet access.

End users have the option to work in an off-line mode while working on their email. They are able to do this because Outlook supports files known as dot OST (.OST) files. These dot OST files are Offline Folder files that allow users to make changes to their email files and then, at a later or more convenient time, synchronize those changes with the Exchange server.

But sometimes they may encounter performance problems when they are working with items in a large dot OST file. One of the problems they may have is that Outlook stops responding or hangs during normal usage. End users will more than likely be in the middle of an email activity such as reading emails, saving emails or deleting emails.

Earlier versions of Outlook, prior to Outlook 2007, did not exhibit these problems. Most often the slow response or no response problems are with very large dot OST files that are greater than four Gigabytes (4GB). Slow response times can be seen during email downloads or during synchronization and will often take longer and longer as the dot OST file continues to increase in size. Administrators should note that the slower the disk speed is then, the more likely it is that the slower response times will be seen.

Microsoft made changes when they introduced Outlook 2007 and some of those changes contributed to the slow response time. One of those changes occurred in how data was written to disk. As the number of items in the dot OST files increased then how often data was being written to the disk drives was also increased. Part of this methodology was meant to accommodate the new data structures of the dot OST files.

Continue reading Troubleshooting Large OST Files

One of the fastest end user communications you can have will be from everybody’s least desired scenarios: slow startup performance with Outlook.

We’ve all become so accustomed to almost instantaneous response times that a five or ten percent drop in startup times can cause a major increase in complaints from end users. From small office operations to larger enterprise corporations those five to ten percent drops in startup times can sometimes be translated into lost revenue especially when the slow startup time bleeds into continuous slower performance and reduced availability and access to data.

There can be many causes for slow startup performance:

1. Folder updates are interrupted.
2. Interference or incompatibility with anti-virus or anti-spam software.
3. Problems with recent add-ins.
4. Inbox messages may be corrupted.
5. Critical file corruption.
6. TCP/IP communication problems.
7. Server/Client hardware configurations
8. User Interface customizations

If you suspect file or folder corruptions then one way to check for this is to check the size of some of your critical system files. Some very easy fixes include renaming or deleting these files and then letting Outlook recreate them as necessary. In Outlook 2007 such files that can be deleted or renamed include: outcmd.dat, extend.dat, views.dat and frmcache.dat.

Continue reading Outlook Startup and Slow Performance

Most end users have multiple accounts in a variety of places. They’ve joined sites and community forums as general as anything automobile related or financial advice to as specific as a fan club’s web site. Then you have the more common email account offerings from the popular search engine web sites and/or traditional email service sites.

Some users have reported errors when accessing external email accounts though they never had similar errors before. Error messages that include a “forbidden” notation may also be displayed. Such error messages look like the following:

Forbidden
Configuration:
   Account: (external account)
   Server: http://(server name)/
   User name: {email address}
   Protocol: HTTPMail
   Port: 0
   Secure(SSL): 0
   Error Number: 998
   Code: 800ccc33

Additional information may be displayed as follows:
Unable to poll for new messages on your HTTP server. 
Server Response: ‘Forbidden’,
Secure(SSL): No,

“Header download for the ‘Inbox’ folder did not complete. “

It’s possible that your end user’s email account is not set up correctly or that it may need to be re-created. An administrator can follow the steps outlined below:

1. Select Tools and then Account Settings.
2. Select the Email tab.
3. Click “New”.
4. Select the appropriate server: Microsoft Exchange, POP3, or IMAP.
5. Click “Next” or hit enter.
6. Enter the nickname for the user. This will be the users “sender” identity.
7. Type the users fully qualified email address. (For example: username@service.com)
8. Check “manually configure server settings” or “additional server types”.
9. Click “Next” or hit enter.
10. Check “Internet Email”.
11. Click “Next or hit enter.
12. Select IMAP for the account type.
13. Type the incoming email server name such as: “imap.server.com”
14. Type the outgoing email server name such as: “smtp.server.com”
15. Type the user’s screen name.
16. Type the user’s password.
17. Click “More Setting”.
18. Select the Outgoing Server tab.
19. Check “My outgoing server requires authentication”.
20. Select the Advanced tab.
21. Type the outgoing server’s port number.
22. Click “OK” or hit enter.
23. Click “Next” or hit enter.
24. Click “Finish”.
25. Click “Close”.

This will enable an end user to download email messages, using standard email protocols, from their external account into Outlook and send email as if from that external email address account.

Continue reading Problems Accessing External Email Accounts

For many employees of a large company having access to email twenty-four by seven (24×7) is what sets them apart from other companies. And for those employees who are away from the office or while traveling on business a connection can be the difference between success and missed deadlines. 

A service that most remote users can benefit from is called Outlook Web Access (OWA) which is a webmail service of Microsoft Exchange Server. OWA provides email functionality and mailbox features such as: Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Notes and Public Folders. Mobile devices with Outlook Web Access functionality can support many corporate users and provide that valuable connection to corporate email.

Using a web browser on their handheld device users can access their much needed email. But as will often happen with technology Outlook Web Access is not bullet-proof. So administrators can expect to be called upon to solve problems that can come up from time to time when supporting remote users, their handhelds and their web accessible email connections.

One of those problems can involve the 0×80072f0d error code.

Continue reading Troubleshooting the 0×80072f0d Error Code

There are many applications that can be affected by a server’s paged pool size. Applications such as Exchange server can report problems if the page pool size is not large enough to support the large number of user connections that are common in enterprise environments.

Sometimes Exchange server can be impacted if there is not enough paged pool memory. So what exactly is paged pool memory and how do you solve problems associated with a lack of paged pool memory?

One of the steps that occur at boot up time is the creation of memory pools. Two dynamically sized memory pools are created by the memory manager and it is those two memory pools that are used by applications during execution. Kernel-mode components use the two pools to allocate memory for the processes that are running. Those two pools are called the Paged Pool and the Non-Paged Pool.

The size of the physical memory helps in determining the initial sizes of each of those two pools at boot up. The pools are dynamic and so can grow in size over time up to a pre-determined maximum.

So how do the pool sizes affect the execution of Exchange?

Continue reading Troubleshooting Paged Pool Memory in Exchange Server

Configuration of an email server involves many sizing considerations. One of those sizing considerations is called Virtual Memory. Virtual memory is used to temporarily swap operating system items in and out of memory during high memory usage periods. Swap space is usually set to be one to two times of available memory. The swap space consists of a swap file located on disk. All applications benefit from swap space as it allows the applications to run when otherwise they would be starved for memory. Exchange server as an application also benefits from virtual memory.

But the virtual memory blocks must be large enough to meet the needs of the memory requirements of the application processes. If the block sizes available are not large enough then the condition of virtual memory fragmentation occurs. Some of the causes can include the different duration times and different sizes of memory allocations that happen as a result of normal swap operations.

As time goes by large blocks of memory become harder to allocate and at some point will cause applications to fail. Warning and error messages are generated as the virtual memory space becomes more and more fragmented. Some of the warning messages can include event ID 9582 which will be logged in the application event log. This event does not mean that the situation has hit the critical stage but it can and it should be taken as a notification to review the swap file size and to monitor its usage.

The event ID 9582 can be recorded in the event log as follows:
 Source: MSExchangeIS
Category: Performance
ID: 9582
Type: Warning
Description: “The virtual memory necessary to run your Exchange server is fragmented in such a way that performance may be affected. It is highly recommended that you restart all Exchange services to correct this issue.”

This can occur if an Exchange server has less than 32MB of free contiguous virtual address space.

Continue reading Troubleshooting Virtual Memory Fragmentation

Outlook is used in many corporations by many users and has been for many years. So it is not surprising that problems eventually emerge that are related to file sizes or email file corruptions.

Sometimes when an end user has started Outlook they will report receiving an error code such as 0×80040116. Usually the error message will read, “Outlook.pst can not be accessed – 0×80040116”. If this error message is received then be aware that this could result in a loss of all emails and contacts that have been saved in Outlook. So it is a serious error code message and one that will require immediate attention.

This is one of the reasons why I always encourage email archiving so as to reduce the use of Personal Storage Folder (.pst) files which can be difficult to use. Having a good email archiving solution can also help when data and other critical email files have become corrupted or accidentally damaged and are no longer accessible.

There are other reasons why the error code 0×80040116 can be received. It is also possible that the error code has been generated in response to a file size limitation having been reached. Usually this will occur if a 2GB maximum file size had been encroached while running Outlook 2000 or earlier versions. If this is the case then an administrator should try running a couple of different tools to correct the problem. Some of these tools include: ScanDisk, PST2GB and ScanPST. These tools can be used to reduce the size of the “pst” file below the 2GB limit.

Continue reading Troubleshooting the 0×80040116 Error Code