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GOConnor-5246 avatar image
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GOConnor-5246 asked YukiSun-MSFT commented

Outlook desktop intermittently unable to connect, prompts for password and shows no Internet in system tray

Hello,

We recently introduced a new password password for staff which meant many staff had to pick new passwords. Since doing this, several Outlook desktop users including myself experience and intermittent problem whereby when launching Outlook desktop, you will see various error messages. This is the most common:

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If I try to remove and re-create the profile, I also receive errors:

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I have noticed that in the system tray, it shows there is no Internet when I can browse the web fine:

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Occasionally, a restart will resolve the problem but not very often. Changing proxy settings from 'use a proxy' to 'automatically detect' can sometimes help but not consistently. Something that always works is unplugging the network cable to the wall socket and plugging it into the VOIP handset which removes it from the corporate network and connects it to a completely different broadband circuit. If I do this, it will prompt for the Microsoft 365 username and password which is accepted. I plug the LAN cable back in, do an ipconfig/release ipconfig/renew and Outlook works until the users logs out.

I'm not sure if this is a proxy issue, group policy issue or something else. If I monitor our UTM (Smoothwall) I'm not seeing anything blocked for myself when I have the issue. My own laptop has very few group policies being applied and it still occasionally happens to me.

Any advice would be much appreciated as I've been going round in circles with this for some time.

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Hi @GOConnor-5246,

Considering that it's a randomly occurred issue, it could be sort of difficult and time-consuming to troubleshoot. Then after going through your description, I got a little confused about several things and would you mind helping calarify them a bit more so that we can see if more clues can be found?

All the user mailboxes are hosted on Exchange online, right? And are the affected users running a same build of Outlook desktop client? (To view the detailed version informaiton, you can go to File > Office Account > About Outlook.)
Aside from introducing the new password, was there any other change made in your environment or on the affected users side right before the issue started?
Regarding the "No Internet access" showed up in the system tray, does it occur everytime along with the "unable to connect" issue in Outlook?

Besides, as per your concern about the group policies, I'd recommend using the steps below to generate a gpresult report on one of the problematic machine and go through the report to see if there's any potentially relevant policies applied:
1.Press Windows key + R to open the Run command, type cmd and press Enter.
2.Type cd desktop and press Enter.
3.Type the following command line and press Enter:

 gpresult /h gpreport.html

4.Go to your desktop and open the gpreport.html to view what GPO settings you have applied.


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GOConnor-5246 avatar image
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GOConnor-5246 answered YukiSun-MSFT commented

Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to reply, this is much appreciated.

All users are hosted on exchange online.

The issues happens regardless of Office version. For example, I have seen it happen with Office 2016 and Office 365. Just the other day, a user had this problem who was running Office 2016. I uninstalled, restarted the PC and installed Microsoft 365 and had the same issue.

The other day, I restarted my own PC and had the 'no internet access' notification with the globe icon. Outlook didn't work but I could browse the web fine. Restarted, then I noticed it showed the normal 'domain.local Internet access' and Outlook worked just fine. So it appears to be linked to the system believing it doesn't have Internet access when it does.

Other than the password change, we have installed 21.H1 feature pack everywhere recently.

I have been looking a what group policies are applied and it could well be the cause. Next time it goes wrong, I will run gpresult /h gpreport.html - the only issue might be these are school computers so it could be locked down for the user in question.

Many thanks.

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Hi @GOConnor-5246,

Outlook didn't work but I could browse the web fine. Restarted, then I noticed it showed the normal 'domain.local Internet access' and Outlook worked just fine. So it appears to be linked to the system believing it doesn't have Internet access when it does.

Agree with you that it seems that it's more likely to be related to the system.

Considering that you have recently installed Windows 10 21H1 feature pack, I tried searching further combining keywords like "No Internet Access" and "21H1", while no exactly the same report was found, I noticed the thread below which discussed a similar issue but for an earlier version of system:
Still not fix ‘no internet’ connection bug in Windows 10 2004 (OS Build 19041.546)

In this link which was mentioned in the original post, a similar known issue had occurred in older versions of OS and indeed it's related to group policy settings:
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So when you get a chance to check the group policy, you may pay more attention to the settings mentioned above .

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Thanks ever so much for your help with this. I think you are on he right path with this...

It happened today and I have been checking the group policies applied to a particular user. There are loads of policies but one that stands out is a policy that applies various Microsoft Office Settings. This has all sorts of configuration including setting a registry hive for a re-direct pointing to an old hybrid exchange server. This could well be causing the issue.

I have removed the whole policy and will see if the issue re-occurs.

I will keep the post updated.

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Hi @GOConnor-5246,

Thanks for sharing the findings. Feel free to post back with any further update or if you think there's anything else I can do to help with this.


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