Re: VMO issue

rick.bowers · ‎01-10-2003

I have a few users (out of about 400) that when attempting to play vmails to their IP phone, no vmail is played. The phone does ring but when it's answered, the mouse pointer stays in an hour glass state for about 40 sec. locking up Outlook during that time. Most of the time, the play icon within the vmail goes from the pause symbol back to the play icon as soon as the phone is answered. All workstations are Win2k, Outlook 2K using IP phones. I've tried the VMO stripper, reinstalling the latest VMO, running the detect and repair within Outlook. Also checked to make sure all components, such as CDO, were installed on installation of Office. All these users are also administrators of their own system and should have full rights to the registry. I'm stuck. Any hints on a plan of attack to locate where the breakdown is?

lindborg · ‎01-10-2003

sounds like an issue with the TRAP connection not getting anything back from the server (or not liking what it's getting back) when trying to connect to the local phone as a media device.

As a test, can you try using TRAP via the SA or AA (using any account) on one of those client machines to their phone to see if it has the same trouble or not?

rick.bowers · ‎01-10-2003

OK. Also, I just tried having the user play her greeting and recorded name from the AA page and it worked!? Will using TRAP still help isolate this. If so, can you please point me to some documentation so I can learn more about TRAP? Thanks in advance for your help.

rick.bowers · ‎01-10-2003

Sorry, I'm a little slow today. Yes it works from SA so TRAP is functioning. I thought you may be referring to a test application I wasn't aware of.

Let me know where you would with this when you get time..

Thx!

lindborg · ‎01-11-2003

hmmmm... anything else different about these handful of desktops? Presumably they're in the same domain? Any virus scanning software at play? Different audio drivers hanging around (i.e. there's been problems with things like the Yamaha Synth drivers in the past)?

the TRAP functionality (more to the point the media master control) found on the SA/AA and the VMO form are largely the same beast - the one difference is in VMO land it'll launch a "TRAPConnectionHolder" application to we maintain our connection as you navigate between messages - in days of old sometimes this app would get wedged and still be loaded such that subsequent TRAP conneciton attempts would fail in odd ways - you might check the apps loaded in memory and see if that guy is there before trying the connection - if it is, kill it (or them, there may be more than one) and try the connection again.

rick.bowers · ‎01-15-2003

Well, no luck. I have actually discovered about 8 users with this issue. There may be others that just haven't tried this feature.

We're all on the same Domain and these users are using the same IBM Thinkpad laptop as most of our users with much the same audio driver configs. However one is using a Softphone with a USB headset with additional audio drivers but the same symptoms as the others.

The TRAP app does launch and only one session. I did test with one user building an Outlook profile on another box and there were no VMO issues. This must be a local machine issue then, right?

It's peculiar that this is a rare issue but a cluster seems to be in our building. I have two other sites with no reported VMO problems. Any Unity server, CM, or AD account settings that come into play?

lindborg · ‎01-15-2003

probably not related to CM or AD here... the MM control is pretty straight forward stuff - it conencts to the Unity server by name (the name you give it in the config menu) and asks the TRAP server on Unity to dail this user - Unity rings the phone and when the user picks up we act as a media device - as long as DNS is working for name resolution (I'm assuming it is here) and Unity can dial that phone (you can test with a notification device for this issue) and the user is logged into the domain as the same AD account associated with their Unity subscriber (again, I assume this is the case) we should be good to go.

The test with the notification devices for this guy would be worth doing just in case - this will ensure the Unity ports are capable of dialing that user's phone directly - it'll rule out any goofy CM config issues but it's a long shot.

The most common issue here has to do with audio drivers hosing up the media master control and virus software getting in between us and the Unity box. I see the occasional DNS issue where they can't ping the Unity server by name here but if everyone's in the same domain we can rule that one out unless someone is being malicious with a local WINS file or something really evil...

lstonebraker · ‎01-21-2003

I am working with a customer that is experiencing the same issue.

Here are some things we tried to resolve the problem. Still not working.

We were able to open the mailbox where trap isnt working on a different machine where trap is working and use trap with that mailbox.

The issue is specific to the 3 or 4 workstations (known) out of 300 where this problem is happening.

We also tried opening a mailbox where trap normally works on a diffrent workstation where trap isn't working and that didn't work either - no audio.

We uninstalled anti virus, still didn't work.

We disabled anti virus, still doesn't work.

We disabled the sound card, still didn't work.

We upgrade the sound card to the latest drivers, still didn't work.

We uninstalled Outlook 2000 sr1 and reinstalled still didn't work.

We used VMOcleaner and ripped out vmo and reinstalled 3.1.3 and still doesn't work.

We reinstalled vmo and still doesn't work.

We can ping the unity server by name and still no dice.

No malicious users with sneaky fingers that can edit lmhosts or hosts files here...

Ginger Dillon · ‎01-22-2003

Hello -

For what it's worth - we worked with TAC on 2 workstations out of 400+ users running Outlook 2000 SR-1. These users could not even open Outlook 2000 with either the VMO 3.1(3) or 3.1(5) client running. Outlook would go "Not responding" and we'd have to cancel the application. Removing the VMO client, Outlook would start up fine. We ran through all of the same problem determination/resolution steps you mentioned in your post, with no luck. There were never any errors reported in either the Application or System event logs. The two workstations had no unusual software or drivers in common that we could pin the problem on ... we resorted to rebuilding the client workstations. This ultimately corrected whatever problem was preventing Outlook from starting on those two workstations with the VMO client loaded.

Sincerely, Ginger

rick.bowers · ‎01-22-2003

Ginger,

Thanks for the feedback. I would really like to get to the root problem as I have invested so much time in this issue but I have also resorted to rebuilding the workstations. This seems to resolve it so I'm confident it's a local machine issue. Guess it will stay an unsolved mystery for now...

Rick

teid · ‎02-11-2003

We had the same exact problem on 2 workstations out of 400+ as well. Worked with TAC for a long time and did all of the above mentioned things with no solution. Re-formatting the machines was the only solution. It was frustrating since users do not like to have their machine formatted to resolve an issue.

Tony.

rick.bowers · ‎02-12-2003

We have made some progress on this issue. Running a packet sniffer while attempting to play vmails to the phone displayed that Unity traffic was indicating the "Destination Host Unreachable" message. In our case, it appears that we were unable to ping these these machines by name or IP at all from any box in any subnet. After removing all protocols and reinstalling only TCPIP and Microsoft FPS, it was alive. It's acting like some kind of firewall setting was enabled. But, playing to the phone now works.

Hope this helps!

afuller · ‎02-12-2003

One thing to maybe check for is if any of the client machines had multiple NICs or loopback interfaces configured. If so, they may be the ip address Unity is trying to connect to. This is bad if the address is a dummy address that nobody can get to, like the windows default 169.254.x.x addresses it likes to give interfaces that never receive ip address via dhcp.

adam

rick.bowers · ‎02-12-2003

Thanks for the input. It actually looks like it's a service called Determinstic Network Enhancemer that is installed when a Cisco VPN client is installed. Evidently this service is acting as a firewall to incoming traffic to this box.

I uninstalled this service from the NIC , rebooted, and users can now play vmails to thier phone and the IP can be pinged. So far, a reinstallation of this service has worked OK on one machine.

Rick

adeolu_adeoye · ‎07-23-2003

Hi guys,

I am experiencing the same symptoms with VMO that Rick had. I just wanted to be sure about how to identify the TRAPConnectionHolder. Is this an .exe process or an actual application on the desktop? I have already confirmed that TRAP on the server is working fine through the AA on the user's laptop so I am pretty sure that the problem is at the client end. I will confirm later today if there are any conflicting apps or services installed on the user's machine.

Thanks for the help.

Regards,

Ade