Engaging with Microsoft on Outlook¶

When Outlook crashes¶

It is possible for the OpenChange server to make outlook crash. Sometimes its easy to see what the problem is (for example, a clearly bogus response packet), and sometimes its very difficult. Depending on how critical the problem is, you may need to seek support from Microsoft.

The correct place to start the interaction is with the protocol support team (dochelp), not with the product team.

Remember that the scenario needs to be reasonably reproducible.

To provide the protocol support team the best possible information, try to gather all of the following:
1. A Netmon capture on the windows client machine.
2. A wireshark capture on the OpenChange server machine.
3. Relevant OpenChange server debug output (i.e. run the server with "-d5 -i -M single", and paste that into a file)
4. A debug trace of Outlook crashing. This is the most critical part - the other stuff just supports this.

You can capture the debug trace using visual studio (if you have it), but a better option is to use windbg (which you can download), and the best option is to use TTDebug (also known as IDNA within Microsoft), which you'll have to get from the protocol support team.
If you're using TTDebug, the application used to capture is called "tttracer.exe". You have to run it with Administrator privileges on the command line, and you pass the full path to the Outlook executable.

Then package up the .run and .out files from TTDebug, along with the capture files from Netmon and wireshark, the debug log from OpenChange server, and a concise description of the scenario. Use zip (usually better) or compressed tarball. Upload that to somewhere with reasonable web access (OpenChange developers can use labs.openchange.org). Send a notification to the protocol support team contact.

Create a ticket on tracker.openchange.org to ensure that the problem is not forgotten.