Death Inc

INDEXING ISSUE – Outlook 2010

DI gurus, try to help me solve this, or point me in the right direction, we have;

Windows 7 64bit OS
Office 2010

Users (20+ affect) with OST files ranging in size from 2GB to 20GB

Issue, users complain that the search (index) stops working and cant find anything in either their mailbox or an add on mail box. To test it, checking OWA or turning cache mode off shows that the index is stuffed and the mailbox is fine. Some users will get an index starting at 2 and this will continue until all 500,000 emails are indexed (takes about 2  days to complete)

Cannot turn off cached mode as there are no local exchange servers, all exchange servers are in Singapore, thus with cache mode off, the search is painfully slow and non productive for the user.

Current solutions are;
-   If the mailbox is small, rename the OST and have the mailbox download / index again
-   If the mailbox is large, use Outlook /safe and reindex at night
-   If the mailbox is large and the user doesn’t want to use safe mode, rename the ost/rebuild the index again.
There is no pattern to what is causing the index to stop working, have been told by our lovely IS&T offshore team that the problem is local to Central QLD only IE our office, and we must solve it.
Google has me feeling like I am chasing my tail as I cannot find an event log, a fault or anything on what is stopping the search. One of our staff members checked with MS and got the standard, it could be a corrupt local OST, chkdsk the HDD, maybe it’s a network issue, use the rebuild function for Index in control panel to solve your issue, have you tried a new PC (that’s a painful one), turn off cache mode and that will fix the issue (obviously they didn’t listen to us when we explain our environment)

Has anyone else experienced this where they have had a mailbox search/index repitively stuff up for users and they need to be re index?
We have 1 user who has TWO pcs running with their logon, cause the index WILL spaz out and its faster to swap her to the other PC that has outlook running on her logon than to attempt any other form of solution.
Anyone got any ideas for cause and solution?

I ran CCleaner on my computer and my Outlook had to reindex. It could be a registry issue or something clearing Outlooks cache?

Doubt it Zoo. Its an SOE we use, if it was registry, there would be a lot of users bitching. Plus the hotswap PC we have is a fresh SOE with the users logon already applied. Makes no sense why a PC would spazz its registry unless there was a logical reason. User do not download random freeware or anything, again, its a controlled environment. SOE, office adobe and printers. Couple of addins in Outlook and that's it, a fucking painfully boring accounting office.

Currently we have no logical explanation why we have random users with either their mailbox, or an attached mailbox losing the index and then trying to rebuild again.

Only thought is something between the link between Singapore and here somehow causing it, but then the OS should be able to check itself before screwing up.

Have you considered migrating to The Cloud, OP?

Site has 1 year left. Not financial viable. Plus some of the sites are on a 3mb shit LoS link so cache mode is preferred.

have you created a new mail profile? it could be the mail profile itself causing the issue.
i know as a side affect that it will create a new ost file. maybe try it on someone that only has 2GB ost :P

is there any auto archiving being used? i know that can mess with the OST file at times. especially the larger size ones.

Have the same issue at the client im at and our resolution is to remove indexing completely for Outlook 2010 and make a regedit(cant remember the command) to stop it form trying to do so in future.

Searching is slightly slower but it actually finds the required content.
For some context we run all our machines with cached mode off because its not required.

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/56937-how-to-fix-outlook-search-problem

Gang, think we may of had a small break through. After trolling forums and good ole TechNet forums, I found one that was interesting;

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/1ca99ecf-5a31-4af5-8b3f-48c8112b4546/outlook-2010-and-windows-search-failing

We do have Nuance for PDF work here. I have noted two PCs dont have Nuance in the msconfig startup nor the PDF service running and they do not have indexing issues, yet the test PC and other users experiencing the issue have Nuance installed with the service running and startup set to run.

So we have a new test group with Nuance installed (as its part of SOE) but its removed from the Startup and the service is disabled and a fresh index of 88,500 emails is underway.

Will see how this goes and give an update later.