Outlook autodiscovery issue after Exchange service pack 1 upgrade error 0x800C8203

Today let us discuss an issue that may occur once you upgrade your exchange 2013 to SP1.

Symptoms

• Partial or full outlook connectivity issue to internal and external users.
• Address book downloading issue.

Diagnosis

Once you face these similar issue we can start diagnosing from the client side.

There is a nice feature in outlook to check the connection status and test email auto configuration.Let us try this.

• Press Ctrl key and right click outlook icon in task bar,this will give you some additional options such as Connection status and Test Email auto configuration.Please have a look at both of these options and try to configure the mail id using auto configuration window.

If you see an error similar to this while running auto -configuration

Attempting Url https://myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml found through SCP

Autodiscover to https://myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml starting
Autodiscover to https://myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml FAILED (0x800C8203) Autodiscover to https://myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml starting
Autodiscover to https://myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml FAILED (0x800C8203)
Autodiscover to https://autodiscover.myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml/ starting

Please try to disable any antivirus/firewall in your system and retry.

Outlook 2013 normally uses RPC over http for connecting to the exchange but after SP1 up gradation Exchange will use MAPI over RPC and this might be block by the firewall /Antivirus.

Solution

MAPI over RPC is a great feature in Exchange 2013 SP1.It gives us a lot of advantages such as fast reconnection,more security,more speedy syncing etc.

As a solution we can do any of the following:

1. In the antivirus we can create an exception to pass these traffic.

2.Registry edit to forcefully use RPC over HTTP

• Locate and select the following key in the registry.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange
•  Point to New,      
• Select DWORD Value.
• Type MapiHttpDisabled as the name of the DWORD Value, and then press Enter.
• Right-click MapiHttpDisabled, and then click Modify.
• In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.

3.Change to RPC over HTTP in Server side.

    In the Exchange management Shell issue the following command:

           Set-OrganizationConfig -MapiHttpEnabled $True

     If you want to change back to RPC over HTTP use :

           Set-OrganizationConfig -MapiHttpEnabled $False

Hopping that this article will help to save some hours troubleshooting.Thanks for reading.