Good tools for testing external email problems

Apart from using Microsoft’s own connectivity tester for autodiscovery problems, etc which is located here

https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

There is also another good external website for testing individual email addresses, inbound email, etc

http://centralops.net/co/

Another great tool for troubleshooting mail issues is the MX Toolbox website which has a “plain english” email header analyzer

http://www.mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx

Windows update error 80072efd

When windows updates are checked against WSUS on a 2003 server, you may receive no error and no updates!  Check the windowsupdate.log file under c:\windows for the following line:

WARNING: SendRequest failed with hr = 80072efd. Proxy List used.

If you can see no proxy configured in Internet Explorer, open a command prompt and type proxycfg.exe.  If a proxy server is listed that shouldn’t be, simply run proxycfg.exe -d to set the server for direct access.

When testing Exchange 2010 you receive an error failed to find mailbox extest

When deploying a new Exchange server and testing connectivity with cmdlets such as test-outlookwebservices and test-webservicesconnectivity.  This is because the cmdlets use a test mailbox which Exchange creates.  To create this mailbox perform the following.

NOTE: If you receive an error Mailbox could not be created. Verify that OU ( Users ) exists and that password meets complexity requirements this is because you are not specifying the OU correctly, or have the slash around the wrong way!

1. Log on to a MAILBOX SERVER
2. Open the Exchange Shell
3. Navigate to the script directory by typing cd $exscripts
4. Type .\New-TestCasConnectivityUser.ps1 -OU domain.com/Users
5. You will be prompted to choose a password.  This password will change automatically if you have SCOM installed, but if not then make sure it is a long secure one.  You won’t be prompted for it after creating the mailbox

Check the latest patches available for office

As important as server-side software is, it wouldnt work without client-side software too!  It’s worth keeping an eye on the Office 2010 update portal to see if any updates are available – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ee748587

Sometimes issues you may think are caused by a server can be caused by client software!