Recently, I was doing a simple Exchange migration from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010. Once I moved all the mailboxes to the new exchange server, we noticed issues with Outlook. The version of Outlook was 2003.
These were the issues being reported:
- Random Outlook freezing and locking
- Error – “Your Exchange Server administrator has blocked the version of Outlook that you are using. Contact your administrator for assistance.”
- Error – “Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Unable to open the Outlook window. The set of folders could not be opened.”
- Error – “The connection to the Microsoft Exchange Server is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action.”
So, I decided to check all the normal things for Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2003 compatibility:
- A Public Folder database exists and is online
- RPC Encryption disabled
- Outlook 2003 is on latest Service Pack
- Exchange is on latest Service Pack
- EnablePushNotifications registry entry is set to “1”
- Exchange was not restricting any Outlook versions. (How to check and Restrict)
Everything seemed OK. I noticed during the migration that a proper Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 migration did not take place, and that in Active Directory, Old Exchange 2003 servers were present. I used ADSIedit to remove the decommissioned Exchange 2003 servers. This also did not solve the problem, however.
Finally, the answer was a rather simple one: The default public folder database for the Mailbox database was pointed to a decommissioned Exchange 2003 server’s database. After Changing it to the Exchange 2010 Public Folder database – Outlook 2003 started behaving normally.
