Regarding Outlook wanting to install after backup...

[Rothgarr]

I've read on the site/boards how Office may want to install after a full restore...

 

However, all the machines in our office now want to install Outlook 2002 (even though it's already installed on all machines) - only none of the machines have been restored. They are simply being backed up every night.

 

We just upgraded from Workgroup Backup to Single Server Backup. I'm wondering if it's just a coinicidence that we just upgraded our backup software/clients and Outlook 2002 wants to now install or if everything that's happening is completely unrelated.

 

Thanks!

[natew]

Hi

 

There is something else going on here. The client install/upgrade won't do this kind of thing. Any indication as to what Outlook wants to install? Were there any other Windows updates applied recently?

 

Thanks

Nate

[Rothgarr]

Weird. It seems to want to install Outlook "Today" or something. We haven't applied any new MS updates in a few weeks so it can't be that. And being as I would be the one to deploy any updates on the client machines I would know if there was ANY sort of update. Literally, the ONLY update we did recently was to the Retrospect server and client software and the very next morning when people arrived in the office is when we started getting the "Outlook Install" windows.

[Rothgarr]

OK, I have to go back to square one as everyone in my organization is screaming "It's the new Retrospect client!" and I'm getting a lot of heat.

 

I have to ask once more - is there ANY chance that after upgrading our Retrospect backup software and all our clients that it could be the cause of ALL our desktops to behave oddly when it comes to Office products?

 

I'll give examples - keep in mind that every computer exhibited one or more of these behaviors the very next morning after the new Retrospect software was installed (server and clients) and all machines were rebooted. 1) Most of our machines wanted to install Outlook "today" - most machines have stopped wanting to do this. 2) Some machines wanted to reconfigure existing Outlook setups (again, most have finally stopped this). 3) Some machines are woken up in the morning always having Microsoft Works "start screen" running (no one here actually uses MS Works - they just happened to come on the machines a year ago) Any machine that has had this issue still exhibits this behavior.

 

I must stress once again that NO OTHER updates or upgrades (whether it be OS or applications) have been made for approximately 3 weeks BEFORE upgrading Retrospect and none have been made since. We've not had any viruses, etc.

 

Has anyone else seen this behavior? Dantz, is it even Remotely possible that installing the updates could have trggered anything? Is it possible that there's some oddity in the way I'm backing up that could trigger these events?

[natew]

Hi

 

I Have been Supporting Retrospect since version 5.6 and I have never seen anything like this with Retrospect client or Retrospect application installs.

 

In general the client installs a windows service, a sys file for open file backup and some program files in its program directory. I suppose the new client service may be being interpreted as a new system component that Outlook needs to install software for. Thats my best quess- however I must stress that I haven't seen this in 2 years of tech support. There are likely other factors involved here.

 

Thanks

Nate

 

[Rothgarr]

Thanks for the note Nate. I KNOW it sounds nuts and when I read my own post it just seems impossible. But it all comes down to timing (or coincidence). If I can dig anything else up that may help I'll post a note.

 

In the meantime, do you know of anything I should try (like uninstalling or re-installing). Are there any files I should look out for?

 

Thanks.

[natew]

Hey

 

There isn't really anything to look out for. You could try reinstalling and making sure the open file backup option is not installed but that is about it. Just out of curiosity, does the problem go away if you stop the client service?

 

Thanks

Nate

[Rothgarr]

I have an update, Nate.

 

It seems that the morning Outlook-related problems the PCs are exhibiting ONLY occurs on nights that we back up. Furthermore, it appears to only happen on machines when people leave Outlook open at night.

 

We do NOT have the "Open File Backup" option installed. I DO have the option selected in Retrospect to automatically close Outlook, do it's backup, and then re-open Outlook.

 

What I still cant' figure out is why the machines exhibit such unique behavior in the morning. For example, some machines forget all Outlook preferences like signatures, auto sending/receiving, etc. Other machines will have Outlook Today open on screen when we never use Outlook Today. And finally, some machines are woken with Outlook install promps on screen.

 

I'm still testing but so far I believe I'm able to recreate these scenarios.

[natew]

Ok - I think we are getting somewhere now.

 

After Retrospect shuts down Outlook it relaunches it automatically. Retrospect does this while running as a local or network administrator. When Outlook is launched as this new user you won't have access to the actual user's singatures, send and recieve settings etc. I suspect manually closing outlook and relaunching it will sort this out.

 

One question - do the machines where this occurs actually have Outlook configured? Does this happen on machines that actively use outlook?

 

My guess is the machines that aren't set up for outlook will have the install screen. The machines that _are_ setup will have the missing preferences.

 

Nate

 

 

[Rothgarr]

Hi, Nate - thanks for all your help.

 

EVERY machine here is already configured to use Outlook (our standard E-Mail client).

 

Friday night I made sure everyone closed Outlook before backup started. This morning, no machines had any problems. I'll repeat this test again tonight and see what happens tomorrow morning.

 

I have no problem telling everyone to close Outlook when they leave at night. But I thought you light like to hear about this odd behavior. It still puzzles me how the symptoms vary from machine to machine when they are all Outlook-configured.

[natew]

Hi

 

Thanks for the update. I'm really intersted to see what you find here.

The backup is happening for sure - the relauch is really strange though. Is this a domain environment? What user is Retrospect running as?

 

Thanks

Nate

[Rothgarr]

I thought I'd bring this thread up again to see if anyone has seen this odd behavior besides me?

 

Since I've been dealing with this issue for a few months I've been able to collect more data and I'm unable to find any patterns. FYI we use RS Single Server Backup and our network backs up at 11PM each night and usually finishes after an hour or two - we all run Win XP and use MS Outlook. Here are some findings:

 

1) I'd say about half the time when all the people here quit out of Outlook before going home at 6PM, they will come in to a normal-functioning computer with Outlook still closed (the way they left it).

 

2) The other half of the time when people quit out of Outlook there will be a problem with Outlook in the morning when people come into work.

- Some computers will have an "install Outlook?" dialog box up on their screens.

- Some computers will have some odd "Outlook Today" version up on their screen.

- Some people lose all of their Outlook preferences, like dictionaries, signatures, etc. Many people have to repeatedly do a System Restore to a previous date so that they get all their settings back.

 

3) If someone forgets to close Outlook before going home at night, there will ALWAYS be a problem - see #2 above for what happens.

 

4) If we Ctrl-Alt-Del to the Windows Task manager after rebooting a client computer there will only be ONE instance of OUTLOOK.EXE listed in the "Processes" tab. However, an additional OUTLOOK.EXE shows up after every backup where something in #2 above happens. If we do not reboot a computer after a month the list of Processes in the Task Manager is FULL of OUTLOOK.EXE listings, even when the program is not running. Each instance of OUTLOOK.EXE has a large mem usage (right now I'm looking at 30,784k, 20,492k, 16,940k, etc., etc., etc.

 

With all this information, does Dantz have suggestions? Do any customers have any suggestions?

[AmyJ]

Hi -

 

 

 

When this happens who owns the Outlook.exe process? That is to say, looking in the task manager at multiple Outlook processes running you can see the "User Name" under which Outlook was launched. Are they Local System, System, the user name?

 

 

 

Look at the retroclient.exe - what is the User Name listed as?

 

 

 

If you go into the Control Panels > Mail and look at "Show Profiles" are there multiple profiles listed?

 

 

 

Is this a Domain setup or do users log on the machine locally? What kind of permissions do the users have?

[Rothgarr]

Hi, Amy - thanks for your help. I can't answer all your questions so I may need a little help.

 

RE: WHO OWNS THE OUTLOOK.EXE PROCESSES?

Every instance of Outlook.exe that appears in the Task Manager is owned by the User Name (each machine is named after the person using it). For example, mine is "Peter W"

 

RE: WHAT IS THE USER NAME LISTED AS FOR RETROCLIENT.EXE?

On my machine it is called "pc peter", for example.

 

RE: MULTIPLE PROFILES IN MAIL CONTROL PANEL?

No.

 

RE: IS THIS A DOMAIN SETUP OR DO USERS LOG ON THE MACHINE LOCALLY? WHAT KIND OF PERMISSIONS DO THE USERS HAVE?

I'm not quite sure how to answer this. We don't need to log into our own computers. We only need to login once per restart to connect to the server that does the backup (it also functions as extra storage and print server).

 

I hope this helped somewhat - I'm completely baffled. We've been using Retrospect for at least 5 years with no problems when we used Retrospect Workgroup Backup. It's only begun when we upgraded a few months ago to Retrospect Single Server backup.

 

Thanks for your help so far!