Bit of a long post, but as you'll see, I've tried to check out as much as I
could before posting!

I’ve just completed setup of a SBS2003 R2 server and I’m having a big
problem with getting Outlook 2003 clients to connect to the Exchange server
in its native (RPC) mode.

Outlook web access is fine for all users, the users can map drives to the
server, etc – no problems. The client PCs are one which is a member of the
domain and authenticates against the SBS server and one which is configured
in a workgroup so only connects to pick up email. I checked IMAP access to
the mailboxes also works fine, except I don’t like Outlook’s handling of IMAP
so I’d rather use a proper Exchange server setup.

I tell Outlook to add a new account, MS Exchange Server. Enter the server
name and the user name and click Next. Outlook then complains “The action
could not be completed. The connection to the Microsoft Exchange server is
unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action� and
won’t go any further.

I’ve tried the short name server, the FQDN server.domain.local and even
the internet equivalent www.server.net, all with the same result. The
setting of “Use Cached Exchange mode� also makes no difference.

I thought this might be an authentication issue, so I tried setting “Always
prompt for user name and password� under More Settings/Security. That lets me
create the email account and demands a login when I start Outlook, but then
comes up with “Outlook could not log on…. The connection to the server… etc
etc�

Trying to set Outlook up for RPC over HTTP also doesn’t get me far. So, I’m
guessing it’s something about the server’s security or RPC, but 4 hours of
digging around on the web later and I’m none the wiser. Especially as I would
expect a default Exchange server config to talk to Outlook.

I’ve tried deleting the Outlook profile and even setting up a fresh user ID
on the client PC to test from. Same results each time.

If I have “Always prompt for user/password� ticked, then running Outlook
/rpcdiag initially shows two lines – Directory (no server name)/connecting
and Referral (SBS server name)/Connecting. If that’s not set, it clears the
diag list too fast for me to see anything at all! Anyone know whether the
diags are captured in a file someplace?

For reference, both machines are on the same internal subnet and in the
interests of ensuring no interference, the client PCs have their firewalls
disabled (“allow all traffic�) temporarily. The server isn’t running Windows
firewall anyway (single network machine, not in the DMZ). Clients can all
get to the server by hostname for web and other access, so the DNS appears to
be working (DNS is managed by the network router, not the Windows server).

Help!

Any guidance on this much appreciated!