Re: Cannot Open Email Attachments

sgamer · ‎06-13-2001

I installed Unity a few days ago and everything was working fine. Suddenly today, users are not able to open email attachments. The client thinks it has something to do with his AntiVirus server (McAfee). Can you think of any reason attachments cannot be opened all of the sudden? They worked fine yesterday. So did TTS.<br><br>

Report Inappropriate Content · ‎06-13-2001

If they can't open attachments in Email it certainly doesn't have anything to do with Unity or VMO... we couldn't do that even if we wanted to. I think they're on the right track with the anti virus stuff...

is it all attachments or just ones with specific extensions?

Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

sgamer · ‎06-13-2001

Apparently it's not all attachments since they can open PDF's. It sounds like it's MS Office attachments that they are having trouble with.

Should they put McAfee on the Unity server?

Report Inappropriate Content · ‎06-29-2001

I think what you are seeing is the result of security fixes in Office 2000 SP2. The client will not be able to open .vbs, .exe etc. attachements from the patched machine but will be able to from other non-patched systems.

sgamer · ‎07-17-2001

Hi Jeff,
The inability to open attachments is still happening and the client (and I) believe it has something to do with the Unity installation. It now includes all attachments; not just Office documents. The client removed all virus protection from Exchange. While it's intermittent it seems to occur more often when a user shuts down their computer at night and restarts it in the morning. Users that lock the console have faired better. When it happens, it locks up Outlook when trying to open the attachment. After rebooting one or more times they are able to open their attachments. It seems like it's probably an Exchange problem that did not exist prior to the installation of Unity. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Report Inappropriate Content · ‎07-17-2001

Well... I hate to dissagree but there's simply no way Unity can be involve here at the desktop. Some form extension possibly but Unity doesn't mess with your mail objects at all... there's just no way we could be reaching out and somehow locking down the user's ability to open attachments. I know the temptation is strong to always cast a warry eye onto Unity since it's usually the new guy in town, but in this case the server can't be involved.

From your description it sounds like they are having a client issues that has nothing to do with Exchange or Unity. I would concentrate on trying to install a clean Outlook client on a test box and seeing if you can open user's mail from there and taking that route... this doesn't sound like a server side issue to me unless there's more to this.

Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

sgamer · ‎08-20-2001

Jeff,
You were correct in that Unity wasn't the one causing the problem with attachments. It turned out that the clients Exchange server was connected to a switch via a bad GBIC. Apparently Exchange uses RPC (I think that the correct acronym) which really doesn't like losing a packet. A new GBIC corrected this problem. Thanks for your help.