Question Outlook 2016 keeps going as "disconnected" and won't talk to Exchange

[Red Squirrel]

Suddently Outlook on my work PC started to go in Disconnected mode. It worked fine when I was working from home then came in the office. Help desk was able to rebuild the profile and after a reboot it worked, but not for long, it just went back in that state. I'm used to Linux where there's logs and stuff telling me what's wrong. This just plain has nothing, it's really frustrating. Not finding much online either, all the basic stuff like rebuilding the profile has already been tried.

I also found that IPv6 can cause an issue so I disabled that. The help desk's next step is to re-image my machine but I really don't want to go through that and have to reconfigure everything. Anything else I can try?

EDIT: Sorta got it working. I set a static IP, applied settings, removed static IP, applied settings, and now it works. Not sure for how long though... but doing that must have reset the network stack or something and caused Outlook to connect again.

 

[Red Squirrel]

This resurfaced after a reboot. While resetting the network the way I did (setting static and removing it) works, it's quite annoying as it forces a bunch of apps to lose network, have to relogin etc.

I suspect it has to do with the VirtualBox host-only virtual adapter. I disabled it for now to see if it does it again. I will be needing to use a VM on this machine for development stuff, so if it really is the adapter causing it anyone know how to stop it from happening?

 

[mikeymikec]

I once had network issues with Virtualbox on the PC I use as a server, I had to uninstall it in the end, but I didn't understand why it was causing problems. I was just about to say "I use VB all the time on my home PC without issue", but come to think of it, there are some niggling minor network issues on my PC that could be caused by VB...

 

[Red Squirrel]

I can confirm it really is the virtual adapter doing it. If I disable the adapter it fixes it immediately.

I kinda want to use that adapter though... I will be using vbox for development. Is there a way to make this work? I want to have a host only adapter or NAT adapter at very least.

My guess is Outlook just connects to whatever adapter it sees first, is there a way to force it through the right one?

This problem also only happens in the office. If I'm on VPN it's fine.

 

[Tech Junky]

Use nat.

 

[Red Squirrel]

That does the same thing. The adapter is called "host only adapter" but I think it's used for NAT, or Host only. I just opened Virtual Box with the adapter disabled and it just created another one called "Ethernet 3". I will see what happens, maybe simply recreating it will somehow fix the issue. I'll probably only know for sure next reboot though.