OL2000: Outlook Performs Load Balancing with Global Catalog Servers

View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q272290

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SYMPTOMS

When Outlook is run for the first time, Outlook writes the current global catalog server to the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\<profile_name>\dca740c8c042101ab4b908002b2fe182

NOTE: The above registry key is one path; it has been wrapped for readability.

Value name: 001e6602
Value type: String

When Outlook starts after this, Outlook first checks the preceding registry key to determine whether the global catalog server that is mentioned is available. If the server is available, Outlook continues to use that server. If the server is not available, Outlook contacts Microsoft Exchange Server for a new global catalog server referral and writes the new global catalog server to the preceding registry key.

This process may create a problem for load balancing if a new global catalog server is brought to the network because Outlook still uses the same global catalog server that is specified in the registry key.

If the global catalog server is not available, Outlook may generate the following error message:

Network problems are preventing connection to the Microsoft Exchange Server computer. Contact your system administrator if this condition persists.

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RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Office 2000. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

276367 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/276367/EN-US/ ) OFF2000: How to Obtain the Latest Office 2000 Service Pack

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STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Microsoft Office 2000 Service Pack 2.

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MORE INFORMATION

There are three major changes in this fix:

Outlook no longer looks for the global catalog server under the profiles registry key. Instead, when Outlook is started, Outlook contacts the Exchange Server computer for referral to the global catalog server and stores the new global catalog server to the profiles registry key. This enables Outlook to gain access to the newly available global catalog servers.
Administrators can specify which global catalog server to use. This feature is helpful for load balancing when Outlook connects to global catalog servers over slow links. To use this feature, administrators need to specify the global catalog server in the following registry key on the computer that is running Outlook:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider\DS Server
NOTE: Administrators may need to manually create the Exchange Provider and DS Server registry keys.

The following information is provided for Administrators who need to configure the DS Server registry key.
Value type: REG_SZ Value: servername
Where servername is the name of the global catalog server.

If the preceding registry key is specified, Outlook tries to contact the global catalog server that is mentioned in the preceding registry key. Outlook gains access to this key in read-only mode. If the global catalog server is not available, Outlook tries to gain access to the global catalog server as described in the first step.
The following more meaningful error message is displayed to the user if the global catalog server is not available:
The server containing the global address list is no longer available. You can reconnect to a different server by restarting Outlook or retry the operation when the server is reachable.