Mapisvc.inf Management

[Mnereng]

After four years of managing EV, I have had several issues that were ultimately fixed by overwriting one mapisvc.inf file with another.  But I have never seen a definitive guide for managing this little bugger.  In other words, how do I identify the "good" version?  Where does the good version come from?  Where do the bad versions come from?  How do EV servers decide which ones to use?  How do you all manage this and out-of-step mapisvc.inf files?

Any insight would be much appreciated.

[JesusWept3]

ok so first of all, if you use Outlook 2007, the mapisvc.inf actually resides in the Registry and not the file system, if there is one in the filesystem then it overrides the one in the registry.

the EV client uses the mapisvc.inf to register the Virtual Vault EVMSP so that it can show the MDC as an attached PST file, but on the servers it shouldn't exist.

To be honest i'm not entirely sure what determines the "Correct" versions of mapisvc.inf to use, i know there was a habit in support to shotgun it and do this whole "overwrite the smaller one with the bigger one" which is a bit redundant, if you just delete the mapisvc.inf then Outlook goes ahead and deletes it.

As for what version does EV use, well the simple answer that its purely mapi and outlook that determine the who what where when why of the whole thing, typically the conflicts come when you have Exchange System Manager and Outlook both installed on the machine.

But that really hasn't been a pre-requisite since the days of EV2007.

 

[Mnereng]

Symantec support *definitley* loves the overwrite routine.  I'm still using Outlook 2003 SP3 on the EV 9 SP2 servers.  I got the impression that it was still preferred over Outlook 2007.  And looking at the latest compatibility chart, it has less footnotes to be concerned about. 

Jesus, are you suggesting that Outlook 2007 is preferred? 

[LCT]

Outlook 2007 SP2 plus hotfixes is required for Exchange 2010 archiving, if you are archiving exchange 2003/2007 then Outlook 2003 SP3 is required.

[JesusWept3]

It's not a *requirement* that on Exchange 2007 and 2003 that you use Outlook 2003, its just a recommendation, Outlook 2003 for the most part is a little bit more stable and more performant, but to be honest at this moment in time, especially with the performance hotfix, I think you'd be hard pressed to really notice a different in throughput and stability on 2003 vs 2007.

But for Exchange 2010 as CTEV said, Outlook 2007 is an absolute requirement and Outlook 2010 cannot be used at all.

But to the original point of mapisvc.inf, I don't really give it much thought these days, typically fixmapi is more reliable, yet for some reason theres still this strange idea that you must reboot after it, which is pure nonsense in most cases

[Mnereng]

Jesus, if I'm understanding you correctly...you can usually get by with just running fixmapi...skip the overwrite routine and skip the reboot?

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

I honestly can't tell you how many mapi issues i've dealt with when i worked for support and now as a customer, but the thing is, when you've only got Outlook installed and no exchange, there is very little value in nuking the mapisvc.inf

What i can say is that typically there would be just a plethora of mapi troubleshooting done
Delete the mapi profiles, use Closest GC, delete the mapisvc.inf , run fixmapi and reboot
Thats a whole lot of changes where  any one of those things could have helped.

In most cases a reboot may have just fixed the issues by the fact it resets any mapi leaks that have occured, it could be that fixmapi may have worked because somehow the wrong mapi32.dll or mapistub.dll was being used.... it could have been the closest GC because EV was contacting a DC server instead of a GC server or using another domains GC etc

The troubleshooting on that kind of a scale was nonsense, but it usually got the issues resolved, the case closed, the customer happy and off of the phone, but it doesn't really help you understand what the issues actually were.

As mentioned before, with Outlook 2007, the Mapisvc.inf's contents resides in the Registry, if you install a server from scratch and put outlook 2007 on there on its own and never use 2003, you will never see the MAPISVC.inf exist, and i've never heard anyone say "Replace the registry entries with the bigger registry entries" or nuke the registry entries etc

Mosts tasks failing can usually be resolved Closest GC or DS Server registry entries.
If you're using multiple domains you may want to use the ExchServerGCOverride.
If you're using Exchange 2010 you may want to check that you're not breaching any CAS policies etc