Hi -

We have Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager (BCM is located
onsite), connected to a remote Exchange Server.

For the past several months we have been experiencing connection
problems on 2 of our 5 PC's that use Outlook/Business Contact Manager
and Exchange Server.

Here is what happens:

Outlook often reports that it has lost its connection to the Exchange
Server.....even though I can sometimes send and receive email. The
"Connection" indicator in the lower right hand corner will even be lit
sometimes. However, when this problem is happening, and the user
tries to print an email, for instance, Outlook wont allow this and a
little pop up will appear in the system tray saying something to the
effect of "Outlook has lost its connection to the Exchange server".

Other times Outlook will appear to be connected, but the folders will
not update at all.

This also effects Business Contact Manager - BCM seems to require a
connection to the Exchange Server in order to operate. So when this
problem is occuring, because Outlook is reporting that it has "lost
its connection to Exchange Server", the user is unable to print in
Business Contact Manager either....and also unable to add or change a
record etc.

We have 5 PC's that use this Outlook/BCM/Exchange setup. They are all
configured identically. I have done everything from re-setting up the
email accounts on the PC's in question, to reinstalling Outlook and
Business Contact Mgr...to finally, reinstalling Windows XP.

Sometimes makeing Outlook go "Offline" for a few minutes, and then
back "Online" fixes it....but not always.

Note we are not using RPC over HTTP, and I have not made any firewall
changes.

I am out of ideas. I have wrestled with this for months, and spent
way too much time re-installing Outlook and BCM...

The most frustrating part of this is how random this problem is: one
of the PC's that we were having this problem on, I finally fixed
it.....it had been working fine since...for the past 3 weeks, then
yesterday my boss rebooted the PC, and of course the problem
returned.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Mike