Webs’ Random Ideas

Problem:
Multiple users have reported their shared calendars disappearing. They will log off and back on the next day to find their shared calendars are gone. Sometimes they will restart or shutdown and the shared calendars will disappear. Sometimes they will log off, restart, or shutdown and the shared calendars do not disappear. The issue seems very sporadic.

Configuration:

• Exchange Server 2003
• Office 2007 and Windows XP on all clients
• Clients running in Cached Exchange Mode
  

What I have tried:

• Installing all MS XP and MS Office updates
• Searching the web
• I found the two links below and neither makes any sense. There is nothing in the XML file about shared calendars.
• Some Google Groups posting that mentions items from the nav pane being stored in an XML file
• Another article mentioning similar information and recommends running the resetnavpane switch

Possible Solution:
The information for the list of shared calendars a user is connected to appear to be stored in the Exchange account for that particular user. Which means this information is also stored in the OST file locally. So the most likely scenario is the OST file is somehow corrupt.

Well our users have a Roaming User Profile (RUP). Their local user account folder on the computer is replicated to a server, and the information is snyc’d. So our best guess is the RUP setup is screwing up some files. We will be removing this setup from one user’s account to see if it has an affect as we no longer have a need for RUPs.

UPDATES:

05/09/2008 -
Good news with the RUPs, our control group (the user with the RUP) just reported having her shared calendars disappear. Our test group (the user without the RUP) has yet to report the shared calendars disappearing on her. So we will now remove the RUP from our control user and see what happens. I will keep anyone reading this post up to date!