sync protocol error on exchange server

[jlewis]

I have been running my EVO sync'd to our Exchange Server at the office for months now. I've never had a problem. All of a sudden, this weekend my email stopped syncing. When I try to run a manual sync, I see that it reports a sync protocol error. I've never seen this before. Calendar & contacts syncs fine.

Upon further investigation, I see that I can actually send email from my phone. It just does not show any new email.

I've searched for this error, and it seems to be a common problem but I cannot find a solution. We have 2 android phones running at our office, and they have worked fine for a long time. I cannot figure out what changed. Oh, and the other phone is still getting email just fine. It's only mine that is getting this error.

 

[RUSH]

I would suggest clearing out data and cache in the mail app, or uninstall and reinstall your email account.
Ps. Rebooting the device sometimes work as well.

Good luck.

 

[vel7wil]

I've experienced this before too. and its usual being caused my the exchange server at work....if there is a problem at the source it'll hang up your remote service as well....

 

[npark]

It woukd help if you told us if you are setup via EAS or pop/imap.

I have never heard of an EAS account screwing up where only outgoing works, but thats common for pop.

If EAS, try removing the account and trying again. Let us know how that goes.

 

[Jamboaz]

I've had the exact same problem. Re-adding the account may work but only for so long. I'm trying touchdown and it has yet to fail. Personally I think it has to do with stock android eas protocol support that is lacking. Try touchdown and you'll sees what I mean.

 

[jlewis]

A local tech had the answer. Here is his lengthy response, including a link to a ms kb article. It worked for me! Use at your own discretion.


Sure thing, always happy to help. I?d seen something similar to this in the past. The problem with the security patch in question that caused the problem is that after being patched, DNS picks ports at random so you don?t know if the patch has caused a problem right away. Sometimes months or in this case more than a year can go by without any problems cropping up. Then, after a reboot, fresh ports are selected and sometimes DNS will reserve ports for itself that other services or programs require for proper functionality. In this case the AUTD errors in the app log were the red flag for me, which in turn reminded me of the DNS update which then brought me to the KB article around the DNS update.

The archived KB can be found here: Some Services May Fail to Start or May Not Work Properly After Installing MS08-037 (951746 and 951748) - The Official SBS Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs. Now the fix is not complete and to be taken with a grain of salt as you will need to add different multi-string data to the registry key depending on what ports you need to have available. Most is explained in the article and the reserved port list that they provide is fairly complete for most scenarios. In your scenario, port 2883 needed to be available for UDP traffic but was not, so I went ahead and reserved that port as well as any other base ports for exchange that I could think of.

 

[hsiegal30]

The same thing happened with my exchange sync today, I lost calendar/email/contact in the afternoon. My IT department said there were no issues on there end. Im hoping Sprint can troubleshoot this.

 

[mudsocal]

Is there a remedy for this? jlewis' response made no sense to me whatever. I am perhaps not tech-hip enough but this has happened to me once before. I uninstalled and re-installed and it fixed it for about 6 weeks. I have no office email since the 18th (feb 2011)

 

[mgerity]

Here is another work around that is certainly better than deleting the Exchange account from the phone. BTW, this error CLEARLY started for me right when I was running low on space on my phone, so keep that in mind when it comes to avoiding the issue in the future.

Deleting the Exchange account from the phone trashes a lot of settings that take forever to restore. The steps below do not avoid all such problems, but do avoid many. This still isn't fixing the underlying problem, which is something HTC needs to get on, but it is a viable work around.

So, what you need to do is to have your Exchange admin simply use the MobileAdmin tool on the Exchange Server to delete the partnership with your device. Once that is accomplished, your phone will reconnect with the Exchange Server just fine again. You may have to recreate some links between contacts from various sources (not sure on this yet), but most everything else seems to work without a lot of starting over.

If you are your own Exchange admin, or if your Exchange admin doesn't know anything about the MobileAdmin application, you can download the file here:

Download details: Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration Tool

and there are instructions in the folder created when you unzip, or you can go here:

Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync Mobile Administration Web Tool

Just run the downloaded file on the Exchange Server to unzip, run the .msi file from the unzipped folder, open IE on the Exchange Server and navigate to https://localhost/MobileAdmin, and sign in using the admin account for the Exchange Server. Once you are in, you go to the Remote Wipe link, enter the username of the user with the phone having the problem and click the green arrow, and it will bring up a list of the mobile phone associations that have been created for that user (mine showed my two prior Windows Mobile devices and my prior Palm Pre, in addition to the current Android). Find the Android listing, and click on "Delete" and it will remove the partnership, allowing the phone to create a new one on the next sync.

When you do that next sync, the inbox will go blank, and then will re-download every e-mail for the period that you have selected. You will get new e-mails and the sync protocol issue is gone--at least until the next time your phone starts to fill up.

 

[mgerity]

Also...

...the MobileAdmin tool is downloadable at the link I provided for Exchange 2003 and 2007, and is included by default in Exchange 2010. Also, you can access the MobileAdmin tool from another computer by going to https://IPADDRESSFOREXCHANGESERVER/mobileadmin (sub in the name of the server when you are within the network, and the domain name or IP address when you are outside the network for IPADDRESSFOREXCHANGESERVER).