Monday, February 2, 2009

Outlook and 0x80004005

This afternoon, while troubleshooting a user's NDR problem, I ran into a problem of my own:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: RE: Service Desk Ticket 00173590
Sent: 2/2/2009 4:28 PM

The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

Lastname, Firstname on 2/2/2009 4:28 PM
This message could not be sent. Try sending the message again later, or contact your network administrator. Error is [0x80004005-00000000-00000000].

Like many admins when troubleshooting end-user problems (missing/deleted messages, screwy appointments, etc.), I grant a dedicated account service-level permissions on the problem mailbox and begin testing by creating a new profile and logging into the problem mailbox. Tonight, after the troubleshooting session was resolved, I went to log in to my own mailbox profile and all seemed well. A few minutes later, I sent a message, and immediately got the above NDR. Having done this hundreds of times, I was pretty perplexed.

Starting to troubleshoot my own mailbox like I have hundreds of others, I went to verify that there was nothing wrong with my account by hitting my back-end mailbox server.

Logged off, logged back in, and retried sending a message. Same NDR.

I've usually experienced 80004005 (in relationship to Outlook) being a security or permissions problem of sorts. I was able to track the issue down to the way I had configured the temporary I was using for troubleshooting. After entering the server name and mailbox name, you are presented with a dialog box for credentials. I entered the credentials for which I had granted service account permissions, and had inadvertantly selected the "Save Password" button.

In whatever crazy universe I'm operating in, that seemed to be somehow affecting my logons with other profiles. To rectify the situation, I went to Control Panel > Mail > E-Mail Accounts > Change E-Mail Account > More Settings > Security and selected the "Always Prompt for Logon Credentials" checkbox. OK all the way out, launch Outlook, put in my new credentials, and then try to send/receive.

Problem solved.

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