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Dear all,

we are having a strange thing with Office 365…

Our setup is pretty basic:

1 x windows server 2022 acting as domain controller and fileserver

1 x windows server 2022 acting as broker / rd gateway server

1 x windows server 2022 acting as RDS host (a second one needs to be deployed soon). FSLogix deployed.

Our mails are Office 365 and we are using MS Office shared computer licensing on our RDS host, which works fine, so licensing is ok.

From time to time (a few times a week) outlook stops functioning. When opening outlook it’s stuck on loading profile. The only solution is rebooting the server, then it works again, but it is not that simple to reboot this RDS host everyday or so.

It is not my first setup like this, even not with FSLogix, and I never had those problems before.

Did a search on google, but no results (well, not results that actualy works).

already did the updates on windows, installed a newer version of FSLogix, installed all updates for Office suite… Nothing helps.

Disabled FSLogix so users have their outlook profile not in a container is no fix either.

Did some connectivity tests online and everything is ok for our domain.

When trying to do an test email autoconfiguration via right click on the outlook icon, it does not open when it is stuck on loading profile. After reboot, it opens but shows no errors.

When testing the connection status via right click on the outlook icon when stuck, it show an error under authn (error*).

I am out of options…

Anyone has an idea please?

Thanks a lot.

But, our setup is pretty new (a few weeks) and from time to time, outlook stops working.

10 Spice ups
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please clarify a few things, when you say outlook is stuck, do you mean for that 1 person or for anyone in and RD session?

for the stuck user (S) have you killed the task and restarted outlook in safe mode? (outlook.exe /safe)

does that result in the same thing or does it actually start. Same user all the time or random users?

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Thanks for the reply.

When outlook is stuck, it is for all the users on that RDS (about 15 users).

Killing all tasks for outlook and other Microsoft products do not solve the problem.

So no, it does not start, only after a clean reboot.

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killing the task, then relaunching as is or relaunching in safemode (via outlook /safe) ? if you have not tried outlook in safemode I would try that, as the result can help narrow the potential issue.
if it impacts all users that would point away potentially from corrupted profiles, with each “outlook” being in its own process and loading separate profiles, it would speak more to a common thread among all users and/or infrastructure in use, such as a network bottleneck (hard to imagine with 15 users) or some kind of antivirus/antimalware issue holding open a session scanning things.
out of curiosity what are the sizes of the mailboxes for users?

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I tried both of them, so launch in normal mode and launch in safe mode, but without luck.

Outlook profiles are about 15gb per user.

I tried with an office container within FSLogix, and local outlook profile without FSLogix, same problem.

They only use RDS with thin clients, no option for now to try on another device.

But before, they had Windows server 2012R2 with UPD and never had problems.

First two weeks after migration to Win2022 everything worked fine, its only the last few weeks we have this problem.

Firewall is not changed, network is not changed, so its very strange.

1 Spice up
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I agree very strange. Moving the profiles around with different container, and such was a solid idea, pretty much rules out bad profiles and likely indexing or bad disks unless these are on-prem servers and you are storing it all on the same array/disks.
With everyone being impacted still seems like a bottleneck, either in iOPS or packets yet so few users seems less plausible.
so if you switch users for a couple days to using only Outlook in the browser (yeah a pain for sure) does the problem go away or does another app they all use start causing slowness/hanging processes?

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I think I have found the problem.

This was a hybrid setup for migration to Office 365.

After migration, i have setup all to work cloud only,

but the on premise exchange was stil connected in AD.

It was turned off, but, not yet decommissioned.

So,

I have removed all exchange role en deteled the old exchange from AD.

For now, since a good week, no problems anymore.

Still, strange, but it is resolved i think :slight_smile:

2 Spice ups
8

Hi Matsey, it looks like you’ve already tried some troubleshooting steps, but there are a few more things you can try.

It’s possible that there’s another program running on the RDS host that’s causing issues with Outlook. Try disabling any programs or services that aren’t necessary to see if that helps. You could also try running Outlook in safe mode, which disables any add-ins that might be causing issues.

Another possibility is that there’s a problem with your user profiles. You can try deleting and recreating the profiles for affected users to see if that resolves the issue.

If there are any issues with connectivity or latency, you can run some network diagnostics to see if that’s the issue.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft recommends using a dedicated Exchange Online mailbox for each RDS user, rather than using shared mailboxes. This can help avoid potential issues with profile loading and performance.

It’s important to continue troubleshooting until you find a solution, as regularly rebooting the server is not a sustainable solution. And remember, it’s crucial to backup all of your critical data, including Microsoft Office 365 files. Backups are a vital part of any company’s disaster recovery plan and can help protect you in case of unexpected data loss or security breaches.

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