Poping Continued

The complaint of the last user was more confusing. She could not log POP her mails because she was not being authenticated on the mail server. This was strange because this was exactly the problem we had we had with the whole system yesterday. Users were being asked to input there user names and passwords, and these were already configured on there MS Outlook client and on the MailServer. I figured out that she had her mail client open yesterday while I was messing around with the mail server, and this must have cause an authentication problem on her Mail client. I thought of a solution to this but it didn't come immediately. So I just decided to chill for a while. Later in the day after lunch, I just went over to her system, excused her,
1.Opened Outlook, removed the mail account that was configured on it and created another one.
2.I came back to the server room, opened the MailServer configured the same account I just created on her system in step one above on the Server and applied the settings.
3.Then I selected her old account to remove it. In the process of removing it, I made sure I checked the box that said copy mail folder to another account, I selected the new account I just created in step 2 above as the account that should be copied to. Then her previous account was deleted from the MailServer.
4.I went over to her system again and POPed with the new account that was created in step one above, it didn't give me the authentication problem again. I now knew that my problem was 75% solved.
5.Next I went back to my office ie the Server room, I recreated her old account, thats the account she had before Step 1 above. Take note that this account will now be a fresh account on the MailServer, i applied the settings,
6.Then I stopped the MailServer from running. I then copied her old Mail folder that was backed up in step 3 above from that account to the mail folder of the account I created in step 5.
7.I restarted the MailServer, went back to her system, removed the account I created in Step 1 and reconfigured the account she had before Step 1. I POPed and WOW!!! everything was working as normal again.

Please take note that whenever you are working with a client server application, there has to be no link between the client side and the Server side when you are doing any configuration on the Server side. This causes a lot of problems 90% of the times.

Network Administrators have to be very patient, good listeners, and one major thing is you need to know how to think logically so you can easily figure out the cause of problems. A lot of times when you come across some problems, you never understand how they could have happened int first place. From what I have noticed in my line of work, anything that is engineered must come up with a problem some time.

Like I said today was hectic, but not as hectic as yesterday. I wonder what tomorrow brings. Fridays are normally very quite.