Outdated .OST error with roaming profiles
Chad White
someone else might have some experience with..
Recently, we switched over to using roaming profiles in our 75
user WAN (small banking environment) so that users could log into
different PCs to retrieve their email and not have to know how to make
a mail profile for themselves. This is with Outlook 98 on Win95 and
Exchange 5.5 SP1 BTW.
Unfortunately, however, users are constantly getting errors
from their profiles getting out of sync. I unfortunately don't have
the exact text of the errors here, but the most common one says
"Exchange Server has detected you are using an outdated version of
your .OST file. Please recreate the file from the server." And
sometimes they get a "Address book could not be opened error." What I
have been doing to fix this is deleting the profile in the Mail
control panel and going into the users profile directory on the PC and
deleting all the mail profiles files, the .ost etc.
This seems to be happening when a user logs into one PC, opens
Outlook, then logs into another PC and opens Outlook on that one
without logging out of the first PC. Unfortunately this happens a lot
on the teller lines, and those are the users that are least-equipped
to handle such things. I know that their profile on the server is
only updated when they log-out.. Also I have found a registry key in
Technet that will turn off the usage of the .OST cache and work online
from the server.. I haven't tested it but that might clear up my
problem. However, most of the users access the server over a 56K
frame circuit and I am worried that the performance would be
unacceptable.
I would appreciate any ideas!
--Chad
BTW remove spambot from my email address to reply direct.
Jaime Habel
If you are trying to get the benefits from roaming profiles, my first
question would be why OST files. However, I am guessing that your users are
accessing the Exchange server not locally, but over your 56Kb line. If that
is the case, why not set up a NT file server locally (if you don't have one
already), and have them use Personal Folder mail delivery, with the PST
files being stored on the server?
Just a thought,
Jaime.
Chad White wrote in message <369b6180...@news.supernews.com>...
Chad White
Hmm. Hadn't thought of that yet. I'll have to do some experimenting
and see what happens.
When this first started happening I was a little confused at why I was
having problems with .OST files as well, as I had assumed that they
wouldn't be used if the user didn't travel. After doing some studying
in Technet however I found that they are used for caching the calendar
operations and synchronize with the server every few minutes. I
wonder if turning the .OST files off in the registry on the PCs would
significantly slow down the email portion of Outlook 98 over a 56K
line?
Thanks!
--Chad
James King
You can cure the problem instantly by deleting the *.ost file from their
user profile (%systemroot%\profiles\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft
Outlook\outlook.ost) I've found that you do not need to do anything to their
mail profile at all.
As for curing the problem altogether have you tried terminal sever ? :-)
Regards
James King
Chad White wrote in message <369b6180...@news.supernews.com>...
> Hi, I have been running into a problem that I am hoping
>someone else might have some experience with..
>
Eelco van den Bogaerdt
them at this moment. Try looking the KB from Microsoft.
There are several regestry keys concerning these problems.
Eelco van den Bogaerdt
E.vanden...@citee.nl
Chad White <caw...@spambotbigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:369b6180...@news.supernews.com...
> Hi, I have been running into a problem that I am hoping
>someone else might have some experience with..
>
> Recently, we switched over to using roaming profiles in our 75
>user WAN (small banking environment) so that users could log into
>different PCs to retrieve their email and not have to know how to make
>a mail profile for themselves. This is with Outlook 98 on Win95 and
>Exchange 5.5 SP1 BTW.
>
> Unfortunately, however, users are constantly getting errors
>from their profiles getting out of sync. I unfortunately don't have
>the exact text of the errors here, but the most common one says
Chad White
That's good to know. Maybe I will just make a batch file to delete
that dang thing and when they call me have them run the batch file.
I don't think we are quite ready to go to TS yet.. ^_^ (although that
would make most of my roaming issues go away!)
Thanks for the suggestion!
--Chad
Lowell
is located in their personal directory. What happens is Outlook puts the
.ost in a generic place for every user, so when one user logs in to a PC it
uses that .ost, then when user #2 comes along Outlook tries to use the same
.ost causing your error.
I hope this helps
Lowell
Eelco van den Bogaerdt wrote in message <77ur91$d07$2...@reader2.wxs.nl>...
Tim Moffett
Unfortunately, if you simply delete the ost file, you will simply get a
message stating that it cannot be found followed by the option to recreate
it.
I think the problem may be related to roaming profiles. The problem may be
started with the use of roaming profiles and Exchange/Outlook clients that
are not of the same rev.
Roger Watson
Visit at : https://www.osttopstapp.com/