Bizarre email problem

KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired)By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
edited June 2004 in Science & Tech
I can't for the life of me figure out what's going on here. A few days ago, the accountant in my office said he stopped receiving emails. I opened Outlook, and lo and behold, no emails. Anything that was sent out seem to fall into a void as well.

I checked all the Outlook settings and everything was fine. I decide to check his account via webmail. I head back to my desk to check his password and logon to his account. No problem, 16 emails there.

I head back to his machine and log into webmail. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. :wtf: I log into the control panel for the site and check his email usage. 0.0MB used. I do the same from my machine. 0.8MB used. I check webmail from several other machines in the office. All of them work. His email seems to vanish in thin air when you try to access it from his machine.

I'm going to check and see if I can access anyone else's email from his machine. If not, then at least there's some consistency to the problem.

Anyone have any ideas? This just doesn't make any sense.

Comments

  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    Wow! Weird. Be sure to post back if you solve the problem. If I ever encounter this, I'd like to know the solution. Heh.
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    I hope nobody ever has this problem.
  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    What type of email server are you running... IMAP, POP3, HTML... Are you using and Exchange server..

    Are all of his folders showing? I've had problems with Outlook not fully syncing with our IMAP server and forgetting folders.
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited June 2004
    delete his account in outlook and recreate it.
    If that does not work, back up his email on the server, delete him from the ads tree and recreate his account. Im assuming that you are using exchanged tied into ads so when you create a user account it generates the email account. It sounds like his profile in ads is corrupted and when he logs into his machine the ads tree is not parsing his profile properly.

    but who knows I could be way off. Id definately start with recreating his account in outlook however.

    GObbles
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    Mr. Kwitko wrote:
    I can't for the life of me figure out what's going on here. A few days ago, the accountant in my office said he stopped receiving emails. I opened Outlook, and lo and behold, no emails. Anything that was sent out seem to fall into a void as well.

    I checked all the Outlook settings and everything was fine. I decide to check his account via webmail. I head back to my desk to check his password and logon to his account. No problem, 16 emails there.

    I head back to his machine and log into webmail. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. :wtf: I log into the control panel for the site and check his email usage. 0.0MB used. I do the same from my machine. 0.8MB used. I check webmail from several other machines in the office. All of them work. His email seems to vanish in thin air when you try to access it from his machine.

    I'm going to check and see if I can access anyone else's email from his machine. If not, then at least there's some consistency to the problem.

    Anyone have any ideas? This just doesn't make any sense.

    Do you have software in place that can cut out an infected machine from sending email, if so does this also close the whole email pipe to that mahcine IP??? Can the accountant SEND email to you but not receive it??? Also if this is true, and you use a login based SMTP connect to send, teh account might be good in his client end, but security containment software might have closed the pipe from and to his IP with an infected machine detection. Check machine for infections, if you have a security box that can do this, or an IDS system that can deprivilege at ADS or Exchange to the mail server in place. If this is what is happening, an ID recreate at server (ADS and\or Exchange, should result in a temp fix followed by an email cutout again, or no fix from the recreates if this is a pure IP based privilege cutout). Look, if what has been said here does not work as far as recreates (if no security violation detect and contain software cutouts, that should fix, and is probably client end node issue if you can use his privs and another outlook instance set up to his account specs from another physical box and send and receive email) or works only temporarily, at security software interactions with Exchange and ADS, and possibly new security software disabling his box IP from using ports used for send and recieve, or a firewall on his box that is blocking email ports. Look at any errors Outlook on his box might be logging also, for connect issues.
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    Problem solved, and what a simple solution. We had switched webhosts a while back and I had added their IP to the hosts file for a bunch of computers in the office, as a backup in case the DNS servers didn't propagate fast enough.

    The webhost recently upgraded their servers and the hosts file was still there, pointing to the old server's IP. It saw the mailserver, but the old one with no email on it.
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