SBS 2003 and Outlook rpc over http issue

Hi,

First dont reply if you dont have an answer that kinda wastes my time out
here and makes me repost.


SBS 2003 that has been running for 3 years with minimal issues. I have
setup SBS and configured exchange on this machine years ago. Recently I
tried to configure an Outlook 2003 client on Winxp with all updates to
connect via RPC over HTTP with no luck.

I have about 20 of these SBS machines at other locations and have never had
an issue getting RPC over HTTP to work. I re-ran the email connection wizard
with no luck. Checked all ports on the firewall and I have pop, smtp, ssl,
vpn, sharepoint and terminal server open and are forwarding
to the server. I can initiate a session via HTTPS only which works fine.
However I can not get RPC to work. I have tried this on several machines
and it is most definitely something that is screwed up on the server. I know
for a fact that at one point this was working. I did install CRM about 2
years ago but the customer didnt want to use this after a while so I
uninstalled this. I am thinking that the CRM did something to my box but I
cannot seem to figure this out. I even tried my own laptop which I use to
test other customers machines with no luck. I am also unable to get any
windows mobile devices to connect either. It may be an issue with my
certificate, authentication is setup correctly. I checked the RPC
permissions in IIS and it is setup to use basic authentication for RPC
requests.

Any ideas? Both the server 2003 and the XP pro clients are fully patched,
office 2003 is up to SP3. I have also tried to run from a Vista client with
office 2007 and it still is failing. The windows mobile device is version 5
with activesynch.

Any help is appreciated greatly...

Ted

Gregg
Tue Mar 25 15:56:28 PDT 2008

You ended your post with "Any help is appreciated greatly..."

Obviously, it was not!

Posting the same problem again just because you were offended that someone
RIGHTLY pointed out that port 80 is NOT needed for Exchange/OWA/RWW to work
and is a security risk will not get you any better answers.

However, the tone with which you posted this message will likely get you
ignored.

Everyone in here volunteers his/her time to help. Take that into
consideration before you get upset.

See my reply to your original post for some possible help.

Gregg Hill



"Ted" <Ted@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3F6B5A69-F0AC-4F37-806F-10E3D67215E2@microsoft.com...
> Hi,
>
> First dont reply if you dont have an answer that kinda wastes my time out
> here and makes me repost.
>
>
> SBS 2003 that has been running for 3 years with minimal issues. I have
> setup SBS and configured exchange on this machine years ago. Recently I
> tried to configure an Outlook 2003 client on Winxp with all updates to
> connect via RPC over HTTP with no luck.
>
> I have about 20 of these SBS machines at other locations and have never
> had
> an issue getting RPC over HTTP to work. I re-ran the email connection
> wizard
> with no luck. Checked all ports on the firewall and I have pop, smtp,
> ssl,
> vpn, sharepoint and terminal server open and are forwarding
> to the server. I can initiate a session via HTTPS only which works fine.
> However I can not get RPC to work. I have tried this on several machines
> and it is most definitely something that is screwed up on the server. I
> know
> for a fact that at one point this was working. I did install CRM about 2
> years ago but the customer didnt want to use this after a while so I
> uninstalled this. I am thinking that the CRM did something to my box but
> I
> cannot seem to figure this out. I even tried my own laptop which I use to
> test other customers machines with no luck. I am also unable to get any
> windows mobile devices to connect either. It may be an issue with my
> certificate, authentication is setup correctly. I checked the RPC
> permissions in IIS and it is setup to use basic authentication for RPC
> requests.
>
> Any ideas? Both the server 2003 and the XP pro clients are fully patched,
> office 2003 is up to SP3. I have also tried to run from a Vista client
> with
> office 2007 and it still is failing. The windows mobile device is version
> 5
> with activesynch.
>
> Any help is appreciated greatly...
>
> Ted
>

spm
Tue Mar 25 16:05:45 PDT 2008

Reposting the same question, and having a go at people who are simply
trying to help you and give you good advice, will not endear you to
those who would otherwise help. Take a deep breath and consider that
you're the only one who will suffer from displaying an 'attitude'.

--
Regards,
Steve.

Dave
Tue Mar 25 17:05:17 PDT 2008

Ted - in my experience this is almost always certificate related. On the
remote machine, after configuring RPC per the instructions on the RWW home
page, try going to Start -> Run and type "outlook.exe /rpcdiag" without the
quotes. If the RPC dialog box does not indicate an obvious failure, but
Outlook still doesn't connect, in my experience that indicates a certificate
issue.

I have not taken the time to figure out the details of this, but on my own
SBS, it appears that two certificates are required. When I originally set
up the server, I did not enable RPC. Then when I did enable it, or at some
other point, a second certificate got created. All my remote PCs that
successfully connect to my mailbox over RPC have both certs (one is
publishing.domain.local and the other is mail.domain.com). As I said, I'm
not exactly sure how I got to this point, but it's something you could look
into. ISA might be a factor since it seems like that's the only part that's
requiring the mail cert, so maybe this doesn't apply in your case.

It sounds like you're well familiar with the configuration, so what's left
is weirdness like what I'm seeing here. If you can get a domain-joined PC
to connect over RPC from the LAN, you could just export any possibly
relevant cert from that machine and install it on the remote client.

"Ted" <Ted@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3F6B5A69-F0AC-4F37-806F-10E3D67215E2@microsoft.com...
> Hi,
>
> First dont reply if you dont have an answer that kinda wastes my time out
> here and makes me repost.
>
>
> SBS 2003 that has been running for 3 years with minimal issues. I have
> setup SBS and configured exchange on this machine years ago. Recently I
> tried to configure an Outlook 2003 client on Winxp with all updates to
> connect via RPC over HTTP with no luck.
>
> I have about 20 of these SBS machines at other locations and have never
> had
> an issue getting RPC over HTTP to work. I re-ran the email connection
> wizard
> with no luck. Checked all ports on the firewall and I have pop, smtp,
> ssl,
> vpn, sharepoint and terminal server open and are forwarding
> to the server. I can initiate a session via HTTPS only which works fine.
> However I can not get RPC to work. I have tried this on several machines
> and it is most definitely something that is screwed up on the server. I
> know
> for a fact that at one point this was working. I did install CRM about 2
> years ago but the customer didnt want to use this after a while so I
> uninstalled this. I am thinking that the CRM did something to my box but
> I
> cannot seem to figure this out. I even tried my own laptop which I use to
> test other customers machines with no luck. I am also unable to get any
> windows mobile devices to connect either. It may be an issue with my
> certificate, authentication is setup correctly. I checked the RPC
> permissions in IIS and it is setup to use basic authentication for RPC
> requests.
>
> Any ideas? Both the server 2003 and the XP pro clients are fully patched,
> office 2003 is up to SP3. I have also tried to run from a Vista client
> with
> office 2007 and it still is failing. The windows mobile device is version
> 5
> with activesynch.
>
> Any help is appreciated greatly...
>
> Ted
>

Gregg
Tue Mar 25 18:22:58 PDT 2008

Dave and Ted,

One should only need a cert matching the WAN FQDN of the server. My clients
are all SBS 2003 Standard, and I have Premium with ISA 2004 installed until
recently when I went to one NIC and removed ISA.

I have always only used one certificate...and now my GoDaddy cert takes care
of it anyway.

Ted,

After you follow my previous advice, make sure that you delete any old certs
in IE, then try it again from the LAN to https://servername/exchange. That
MUST work, or RPC over HTTP will not work. It should really be named RPC
over HTTPS!

Gregg Hill



"Dave Nickason [SBS-MVP]" <gwdibble@NOSPAM.frontiernet.net> wrote in message
news:eZkDUUtjIHA.1212@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Ted - in my experience this is almost always certificate related. On the
> remote machine, after configuring RPC per the instructions on the RWW home
> page, try going to Start -> Run and type "outlook.exe /rpcdiag" without
> the quotes. If the RPC dialog box does not indicate an obvious failure,
> but Outlook still doesn't connect, in my experience that indicates a
> certificate issue.
>
> I have not taken the time to figure out the details of this, but on my own
> SBS, it appears that two certificates are required. When I originally set
> up the server, I did not enable RPC. Then when I did enable it, or at
> some other point, a second certificate got created. All my remote PCs
> that successfully connect to my mailbox over RPC have both certs (one is
> publishing.domain.local and the other is mail.domain.com). As I said, I'm
> not exactly sure how I got to this point, but it's something you could
> look into. ISA might be a factor since it seems like that's the only part
> that's requiring the mail cert, so maybe this doesn't apply in your case.
>
> It sounds like you're well familiar with the configuration, so what's left
> is weirdness like what I'm seeing here. If you can get a domain-joined PC
> to connect over RPC from the LAN, you could just export any possibly
> relevant cert from that machine and install it on the remote client.
>
> "Ted" <Ted@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:3F6B5A69-F0AC-4F37-806F-10E3D67215E2@microsoft.com...
>> Hi,
>>
>> First dont reply if you dont have an answer that kinda wastes my time out
>> here and makes me repost.
>>
>>
>> SBS 2003 that has been running for 3 years with minimal issues. I have
>> setup SBS and configured exchange on this machine years ago. Recently I
>> tried to configure an Outlook 2003 client on Winxp with all updates to
>> connect via RPC over HTTP with no luck.
>>
>> I have about 20 of these SBS machines at other locations and have never
>> had
>> an issue getting RPC over HTTP to work. I re-ran the email connection
>> wizard
>> with no luck. Checked all ports on the firewall and I have pop, smtp,
>> ssl,
>> vpn, sharepoint and terminal server open and are forwarding
>> to the server. I can initiate a session via HTTPS only which works fine.
>> However I can not get RPC to work. I have tried this on several
>> machines
>> and it is most definitely something that is screwed up on the server. I
>> know
>> for a fact that at one point this was working. I did install CRM about 2
>> years ago but the customer didnt want to use this after a while so I
>> uninstalled this. I am thinking that the CRM did something to my box but
>> I
>> cannot seem to figure this out. I even tried my own laptop which I use
>> to
>> test other customers machines with no luck. I am also unable to get any
>> windows mobile devices to connect either. It may be an issue with my
>> certificate, authentication is setup correctly. I checked the RPC
>> permissions in IIS and it is setup to use basic authentication for RPC
>> requests.
>>
>> Any ideas? Both the server 2003 and the XP pro clients are fully
>> patched,
>> office 2003 is up to SP3. I have also tried to run from a Vista client
>> with
>> office 2007 and it still is failing. The windows mobile device is
>> version 5
>> with activesynch.
>>
>> Any help is appreciated greatly...
>>
>> Ted
>>
>
>

Dave
Wed Mar 26 08:59:25 PDT 2008

You are unquestionably right - only one cert should be needed, and it should
match the fqdn. I'm not sure how I got into the situation where two certs
are required, but I know it's something to do with having originally left
RPC disabled, then enabling it, and also having completely changed my mail
configuration at some point in amongst all that. If I thought this was
likely to be common, I'd figure out exactly how I got into this
configuration.

My primary point to Ted is that RPC issues are most often the cert, and if
it's not something fairly obvious, then I recommend looking for something
bizarre like the thing I've got going on here.


"Gregg Hill" <bogus@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:O1CNu$tjIHA.1208@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Dave and Ted,
>
> One should only need a cert matching the WAN FQDN of the server. My
> clients are all SBS 2003 Standard, and I have Premium with ISA 2004
> installed until recently when I went to one NIC and removed ISA.
>
> I have always only used one certificate...and now my GoDaddy cert takes
> care of it anyway.
>
> Ted,
>
> After you follow my previous advice, make sure that you delete any old
> certs in IE, then try it again from the LAN to
> https://servername/exchange. That MUST work, or RPC over HTTP will not
> work. It should really be named RPC over HTTPS!
>
> Gregg Hill
>
>
>
> "Dave Nickason [SBS-MVP]" <gwdibble@NOSPAM.frontiernet.net> wrote in
> message news:eZkDUUtjIHA.1212@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> Ted - in my experience this is almost always certificate related. On the
>> remote machine, after configuring RPC per the instructions on the RWW
>> home page, try going to Start -> Run and type "outlook.exe /rpcdiag"
>> without the quotes. If the RPC dialog box does not indicate an obvious
>> failure, but Outlook still doesn't connect, in my experience that
>> indicates a certificate issue.
>>
>> I have not taken the time to figure out the details of this, but on my
>> own SBS, it appears that two certificates are required. When I
>> originally set up the server, I did not enable RPC. Then when I did
>> enable it, or at some other point, a second certificate got created. All
>> my remote PCs that successfully connect to my mailbox over RPC have both
>> certs (one is publishing.domain.local and the other is mail.domain.com).
>> As I said, I'm not exactly sure how I got to this point, but it's
>> something you could look into. ISA might be a factor since it seems like
>> that's the only part that's requiring the mail cert, so maybe this
>> doesn't apply in your case.
>>
>> It sounds like you're well familiar with the configuration, so what's
>> left is weirdness like what I'm seeing here. If you can get a
>> domain-joined PC to connect over RPC from the LAN, you could just export
>> any possibly relevant cert from that machine and install it on the remote
>> client.
>>
>> "Ted" <Ted@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:3F6B5A69-F0AC-4F37-806F-10E3D67215E2@microsoft.com...
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> First dont reply if you dont have an answer that kinda wastes my time
>>> out
>>> here and makes me repost.
>>>
>>>
>>> SBS 2003 that has been running for 3 years with minimal issues. I have
>>> setup SBS and configured exchange on this machine years ago. Recently I
>>> tried to configure an Outlook 2003 client on Winxp with all updates to
>>> connect via RPC over HTTP with no luck.
>>>
>>> I have about 20 of these SBS machines at other locations and have never
>>> had
>>> an issue getting RPC over HTTP to work. I re-ran the email connection
>>> wizard
>>> with no luck. Checked all ports on the firewall and I have pop, smtp,
>>> ssl,
>>> vpn, sharepoint and terminal server open and are forwarding
>>> to the server. I can initiate a session via HTTPS only which works
>>> fine.
>>> However I can not get RPC to work. I have tried this on several
>>> machines
>>> and it is most definitely something that is screwed up on the server. I
>>> know
>>> for a fact that at one point this was working. I did install CRM about
>>> 2
>>> years ago but the customer didnt want to use this after a while so I
>>> uninstalled this. I am thinking that the CRM did something to my box
>>> but I
>>> cannot seem to figure this out. I even tried my own laptop which I use
>>> to
>>> test other customers machines with no luck. I am also unable to get any
>>> windows mobile devices to connect either. It may be an issue with my
>>> certificate, authentication is setup correctly. I checked the RPC
>>> permissions in IIS and it is setup to use basic authentication for RPC
>>> requests.
>>>
>>> Any ideas? Both the server 2003 and the XP pro clients are fully
>>> patched,
>>> office 2003 is up to SP3. I have also tried to run from a Vista client
>>> with
>>> office 2007 and it still is failing. The windows mobile device is
>>> version 5
>>> with activesynch.
>>>
>>> Any help is appreciated greatly...
>>>
>>> Ted
>>>
>>
>>
>
>