Hi Guys I'm pulling out my hair with this one. Have tried pretty much everything I know so could use some advice! Ok so here goes, the spec: MS Windows 2003 Enterprise (Fully Patched) MS Exchange 2003 Enterprise (SP2) OWA Issue is this: From outside the network, go to the mail domain, no problems, it asks for user credentials (standard windows typed login box as opposed to the OWA Welcome page for some reason) I log in to the mail account using username@local.domain and password and it appears to go through fine. It will bring up both the OWA panes with no information in then ask for the same credentials again, as they are still already in the box I hit "OK" but it comes back immediately again! If I do this 3 times it says: "LSA cannot be contacted" However, get this, if I wait for about 1 minute then hit "OK" it logs me in! Then I can browse the inbox UNLESS I have an email that has a remote image or URL in it, then it will do exactly the same thing. If i switch to another folder within the mailbox it will ask for the credentials again....This happens to every single mail account. So far, I have done the following: Checked events for anything significant Checked patch levels Rebuilt theDC and Exchange again from scratch leaving ONLY the user mailboxesintact Combined the DC and Exchange server into one to see if that makes a difference Ran Exchange Best Practice Analyser against the server The weird thing is this; OWA on the internal network works perfectly! The problem only happens when accessing from outside the network! Even my Windows Mobile devices work fine syncing with the server from outside the network. Anyone have any ideas whatsoever?? I am so lost with this one. Thanks

It sounds like you might be trying to use Integrated Windows Authentication on the external-facing side of your firewall. IWA won't work on the outside of a firewall, unless you very widely open up the firewall, which defeats its purpose in the first place. If you use Basic Auth + SSL, do things work as expected for you then?

Thanks very much for the reply. Seems I may have made a classic "school boy error" :oops: of not rulling out all the factors in this! I tried it from an internet cafe - guess what - it works!! But the place I was testing from has a "weird" firewall setup which was causing this. Apologies and thanks for your help :-)