I also could not get a clean Test-OutlookWebServices in Exchange 2007 SP1 as Joel Stidley mentions on his post here.
But prior to that I was getting “403: Permission Denied” errors. Nothing I tried worked.
So I ended up removing just the Exchange Web Services or EWS with Remove-WebServicesVirtualDirectory and recreating it with New-WebServicesVirtualDirectory. This restored EWS to its defaults. That fixed my 403 problem quickly.
Then I started getting the “401: Unauthorized” as Joel mentions on his post. I opted for Method 2 (no reboot).
After that, my EWS came up without any issues…
I tested inside and outside hosts with Outlook and Communicator, all passed.
Test-OutlookWebServices ran clean.
Outlook connection status (ctrl-right click on running icon) and Test Autoconfiguration all were clean and reconnected quickly.
Event logs were all clean to boot!!!!!
To make things even better, I was then able to switch Outlook RPC/HTTP authentication to NTLM and it worked flawlessly! For some reason previously it only worked in Basic mode, and under some circumstances would annoy outside users with unnecessary credential checks.
We in IT are responsible to enforce the fewest credential checks necessary, while not compromising anyone’s security. Credential checks should also use the most secure and resilient form of communication available at the time of that check.
So if your Outlook RPC/HTTP and/or Communicator are complaining about communicating with Exchange, my first step would be to rebuild EWS.
