Mac mail and exchange server 2003 problem

October 18, 2007 12:24 PM

So I am running mac mail in 10.4.10 and connecting to an exchange server. It has worked pretty well for a couple of years until today. Now it is locking up and saying that my password is invalid. Our network allows 3 tries and then it locks you out during password entry. I can get it unlocked and I know that the password is correct. I also reset my keychain access thinking that was the problem. Anyone have any suggestions?

So I am running mac mail in 10.4.10 and connecting to an exchange server. It has worked pretty well for a couple of years until today. Now it is locking up and saying that my password is invalid.

Our network allows 3 tries and then it locks you out during password entry. I can get it unlocked and I know that the password is correct. I also reset my keychain access thinking that was the problem. I can still see a couple of other mounted shares that are also on our server so I am pretty sure that the server isn't the issue (this time) and I have set my password to never expire on the server side of things. Any ideas? I am at my wits end on this one.


Thanks for any suggestions.

posted by pleuroma to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Download Thunderbird or something, and try that. At least that way you can figure out if it's the server or the client that's at fault.
posted by edd at 12:26 PM on October 18, 2007

I just tried that and Thunderbird seems to be working with no problem. So I think that client is doing something weird.
posted by pleuroma at 12:40 PM on October 18, 2007

Did anything change on the server side?
posted by Thorzdad at 2:23 PM on October 18, 2007

There have been no server updates or anything else that we can figure out that could have changed that might cause this. We set the server to never let my password expire, but it is still locking me out after the 3 attempts to connect. Mail is configured to check every 5 min. So I am having to use thunderbird until I can find a solution.
posted by pleuroma at 2:37 PM on October 18, 2007

Did you pick a longer password than usual? And rather than resetting your keychains, delete the prefs to them (even the system level one).
posted by cjorgensen at 2:43 PM on October 18, 2007

I had similar problems, although not with an exchange server. The problem had nothing to do with my password -- it was just that if my internet connection was ever slow (because my cable internet was slow, because I was up- or down-loading something large, because I was sending mail with an attachment, because I was Skyping, because the planets aligned the wrong way) then I got a password-incorrect error.

Apparently MacMail is just really touchy about speed, and if something slows down its access to the server, it assumes the password must be wrong.

I discovered that when I got this password-incorrect error I could just hit Cancel, and then hit Get Mail (and I'd have to tell Mail I was online again) and all would be well again.

It's not a permanent fix, and it might not apply to you, but it's something to look into -- see if you get this problem when something is slowing down your connection, and if cancelling the error box works, so that you're not sending multiple password attempts.

Capri
posted by Capri at 7:55 PM on October 18, 2007

Is your account setup as IMAP or Exchange in Mail.app?

I would check the password type you are using, in Preferences -> Accounts -> Advanced tab, usually you will see something like password or md5 challenge response. Try a different one, check to make sure you are using the right ports if using imap, 143 for non encrypted and hopefully 993 for SSL encrypted.

I believe the Exchange support uses 993/143 and also 80 or 443 for the webdav / outlook web access scraping.

That is where I would start.
posted by mrzarquon at 1:13 PM on October 19, 2007