RotW: Outlook Web Access vs Safari

ByMike Moffit

A customer came to the service counter reporting Internet issues with a new machine, specifically that after a time webpages would no longer load. The address bar would show the URL, the progress bar would go a little way across and then Safari would hang up. Restarting Safari allowed her to surf for a time, but then the symptom would recur. I told her I would take a quick look to see if I could find the problem, and maybe see an immediate quick fix.

I was able to connect without issue and navigate to many different pages. Now about half the tech support problems we get are related to Internet issues, and of those the overwhelming majority are pretty simple software fixes. Incorrect and corrupted settings are usually the culprit. After looking at her machine for a couple minutes I was pretty sure it was a software issue. During the rest of that day I wasn’t able to recreate her issue; I was able to go to any number of websites without issue.

At this point I felt that her issue was likely related to the network she was using at home. I repaired permissions, reinstalled the OS, and optimized the Network Settings to give her the best chance to connect. She took the machine home to test with the understanding she would come back if the issue persisted – which of course it did. I came in the following Monday to discover that indeed the issue had reoccurred, and that the customer was pretty disappointed that her new MacBook Pro was having some kind of issue, especially since she was leaving for school that day! I was pretty bummed myself – intermittent issues can be very tricky to diagnose and resolve.

While gathering information from the staff member who had talked to her I found the way to the solution. He had seen her recreate the issue in just a few minutes. And he mentioned that she could not redirect after she had visited her college website. That turned out to be the critical clue. With that information I was able to recreate the issue easily and repeat it. Being able to recreate an issue reliably is great news for a troubleshooter. Even better, I was able to recreate the issue on any Mac in the store, which meant the website was the issue, not her machine. A little clicking and vola! The link to her college email caused the freeze-up. It turns out this college uses Outlook Web Access for its mail server, which is not Safari-compatible, so much so it was freezing Safari solid. I downloaded Firefox, which allowed access to the mail server without issues, and the customer was able to pick up her machine on her way out of town to school.

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  • As service technicians, we are always getting into your system. Over the past seven years the iMac has changed quite a bit from the small white 17-inch screen with a white acrylic case to the 27-inch aluminum beast we have now.

    The parts inside have changed a lot as well–while some have stayed relatively the same (such as the optical drive and the hard drive), other components such as RAM, AirPort card and logic board have all been reduced in size. While the overall access to the internals of the iMac has become a bit more difficult, we’ve found that the design is one that still amazes through the attention to detail.

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    “*jasonl@smalldog.com*”:mailto:jason@smalldog.com