Cannot send email from outlook 2003

In out network SBS 2003 is configured with Exchange Server. All emails sent/received are managed by Exchange. The incoming mails comes directly in the server while the outgoing is handled by a separate SMTP server. The system notified with some pending security updates which we performed and later on got a report from client that all mail operations failed. The internal as well the external email operation failed to work and the mails are bounced. Rightnow there is no issue with the setup but somehow the email is not working well while with minor settings we are able to restore the incoming. Hope this is just a permission issue.

I am facing the same issue with 4 different users on the network. They had reported the same as undeliverable. They are getting a mail bounce message from the admin but somehow it looks the emails are bounced due to delivery time limit. I am also getting the same operation fail error and it is annoying to some extent. I am using Outlook 2003. In the log I found a error related to some DCOM unable to communicate.

Can you use OWA. Just test that once and see whether you are getting any error or not. You can create a test mail account and carry out all changes on that so that there will be no issue at all. I will recommend you to reconfigure all the stuff back from scratch and it will help you. You can recreate the exchange profile which can help you more. A number of time when the profile is corrupted you get this kind of issues. Just recreate the profile and then check back again.

It looks to be some issue with cache mode. I think you must retry to send the message and see whether it works or not. The user who is trying to send the same must be authorized to send the mail. So somehow the profile is corrupted or changed due to which you are facing problem. The problem lies with permission only. Reconfiguring mailbox is one the best way to get rid of this issue.

The major issue lies here is the problem. No one is able to explain exactly what they are facing. That is the reason we are just rotating around on different solutions. First of all if the mailboxes fail to work, it is necessary you must verify the access permission. It is possible that current critical updates have modified the permission due to which the mailbox fails to work.