Two issues have come up several times for my SBS 2008 clients connecting to Outlook Web Access or their office computers.
OUTLOOK WEB ACCESS
If you go to your remote access web site (e.g., http://www.domainnamenet.com, or http://remote.domainname.com) and click on “Check email”, Outlook Web Access will appear and be fully usable, but it will time out and return you to the login screen after it’s inactive for a short time – ten minutes in my experience. That’s not a huge problem but it’s inconvenient to use it as a full-time replacement for Outlook when you have to constantly type in your password.
If you go straight to the Outlook Web Access link, you’ll be able to check a box indicating that you are at a “private computer”, and Outlook Web Access will no longer time out.
The link is to “https://” instead of “http://”, and the address is followed by “/owa”. Examples: https://www.domainnamenet.com/owa or https://remote.domainname.com/owa.
Thanks to Philip Elder for figuring that out.
CONNECTING TO YOUR COMPUTER
Several Windows XP users have gotten a misleading error message:
The wizard can not configure Remote Desktop Connection settings. Make sure that the client version of Remote Desktop Protocol (RPD) 6.0 or later is installed on this computer.
The latest version of the remote desktop software is installed with Windows XP Service Pack 3, so it is already present on any up-to-date computer. The issue has instead turned out to be resolved by re-registering the ActiveX control. To do this, click Start, click Run, type
regsvr32 %systemroot%system32mstscax.dll
and hit Enter.
There is a small batch file here that will do the same thing. Download it and save it someplace where you can find it. Then close Internet Explorer and go to thee folder where you saved the file FixRWW.bat.
Windows XP: locate the file that you downloaded, FixRWW.bat, and double-click on it to run it.
Windows Vista: locate the file, right-click it, and click on “Run as administrator.”
There is more information about fixes for other Remote Web Workplace problems here. Good luck!
