When you synchronize offline folders over RAS or the network, Microsoft
Exchange Server 5.0 periodically stops responding. The progress dialog box
on the screen is still animated, it but does not advance, leaving the
network or RAS connection open. Moving the mouse causes synchronization to
resume.
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The problem is in the behavior of the Win32 API MsgWaitForMultipleObjects
as it is used by the Windows NT notification engine in its
ScMsgWaitForSignal call. MsgWaitForMultipleObjects does not notice a window
message posted from the notification thread to the main thread, enabling it
to deliver pending notifications. The reason is that the message was
PeekMessage'd by code in the main thread (may have been OLE, but could be
anywhere) and MsgWaitForMultipleObjects interprets peeked messages as
intentionally left on the queue, and therefore does not return as it does
with new, unpeeked messages. In our case the message is responsible for
initiating delivery of notifications, but because the thread is waiting for
notifications to be delivered, the process stops until a genuinely new
message (such as a mouse move) is posted to the message queue.
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Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server
version 5.0.
This problem was corrected in the latest Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0 U.S. Service Pack. For information on obtaining the service pack, query on the
following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):
S E R V P A C K
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