Hi!

Seen a few threads about the problem of the 'Problem communicating with
the MS CRM Server'... 'Error Loading MS CRM functionality' error on
Outlook 2003 and SFO.

We have been hitting this on some clients, but not others - all clients
are running the same base Windows XP2 image - we are running CRM 3.0 on
Windows 2003, a Windows 2003 AD, although our clients are actually
running Novell client 4.92 and authenticating primarily via Netware,
and are not a member of the AD domain. The logged on user with profile
is a local administrator of the PC.

I believe I can remove Novell from the list of variables as I've since
had a PC which is not a member of the domain and hadn't got Novell
client on it either that has failed, yet another which has worked with
Novell on, again not a member of the domain!

We are running Outlook in RPC over HTTPS mode and there seems to be no
'consistency' why some work fine and other fail.

All can see and authenticate to the http://crmserver.domain.com:5555)
site fine via the web, and can also ping, tracert and portping fine
from the clients. We have added the CRM server to the trusted sites to
all our clients but whilst this fixed most, some are just not playing,
and a couple of the PC's we don't want to re-image as they are senior
management ones and only went in a little while ago - means a lot of
profile re-jigging, backing up and restoring, etc. Just don't need the
hassle as they work perfectly other than the SFO!!

Running a TCP trace shows that the failing Outlook SFO clients are
successfully talking to our CRM server also, however running the
tracing shows the following:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

# CRM Tracing Version 1.1 Unmanaged
# LocalTime: 2006-03-22 14:35:07.578
# Categories: *:Verbose
# Schedule: Hourly
# ComputerName: UNIVERSI-1FA5C9
# CRMVersion: 3.0.5300.0
[2006-03-22 14:35:07.578] Process:OUTLOOK |Thread:2144 |Category:
Unmanaged.Platform |User: PlatformUser |Level: Error | call
bizUser.WhoAmI() failed with hr=0x80004005 Function:
CDownloadData::IsCRMServiceAvailable File:
c:\crmv3rtm\src\application\outlook\addin\download data.cpp Line: 414
[2006-03-22 14:35:07.578] Process:OUTLOOK |Thread:2144 |Category:
Unmanaged.Platform |User: PlatformUser |Level: Error | CAddin::Crm
Service is not available Function: CAddin::HrActivateAddin File:
c:\crmv3rtm\src\application\outlook\addin\addin.cp p Line: 357
[2006-03-22 14:36:14.421] Process:OUTLOOK |Thread:2144 |Category:
Unmanaged.Platform |User: PlatformUser |Level: Error |
CAddin::HrActivateAddin File:
c:\crmv3rtm\src\application\outlook\addin\addin.cp p Line: 369
Unmanaged.Platform |User: PlatformUser |Level: Error |
CAddin::HrActivateAddin File:
c:\crmv3rtm\src\application\outlook\addin\addin.cp p Line: 679
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Looks CRM SFO is doing a whoami call - although 0x80004005 is a pretty
generic warning code isn't it?

I've tried re-installing Outlook, re-creating the profile on a test PC,
re-applying MS XML 4.0/SP2 (as per another thread), removing and
re-adding the CRM add-in post re-installing/reparing the SFO desktop
client. Nothing resolving it though.

Has anybody else got any different things to try? Is there anybody from
MS who can enlighten me on some better detail on why use a whoami call,
and what its trying to do in the background? I.e. what its passing, and
what the CRM server is expecting?

Cheers!
Steve

Calling someone from Microsoft for some help (AND not from your PSS -
we already pay you guys too damn much in Select agreements and
licensing as it is!)

Any ideas on the above?

Steve!

Woohoo!

We've finally cracked this!

For anybody else out there who is still experiencing problems like
this, this might not be applicable to your own configurations, but we
found out our problem was that we configure this local security policy
setting on our PC image:

Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local
Policies\Security Options\
Network access: Do not allow storage of credentials or .NET Passports
for network authentication

Its set to enabled by default on our images, as soon as we changed it
to disabled, gave the PC a re-boot, we were able to 'save password'
within the IE web-based CRM client, which then sorted the Outlook SFO
too! (Sometimes, you might need to do a repair from the CRM client
install CD)

Steve