Iphone 3G The connection to the server failed

I tried every post I could find. My computer tech installed exchange service pack 2 multiple times. Each time, we all thought our Cannot Get Mail Issue would be resolved. We have been trying since late October to get our Exchange server to work with these new iPhones 3Gs without any luck.

I finally got tired of missed promises and searched out a group of techs who fixed our company's exchange setup issues. http://computerrepairservice.net/blog/

They fixed our issues within 20 minutes. I never thought I would be calling these guys. I kept on running into their site multiple times. I should have called them months ago. Could have saved $750.00 that I had already paid my local computer guy who kept on suggesting we upgrading our small business server. Thankfully we went with our instinct.

I get the same error: "Cannot Get Mail The connection to the server failed" accept it is everyone in our office. I saw this error out on the web and called a company that specializes in this and he couldn't fix it either. He even gave me his account and it continued to occur so it isn't only on our end. He said he doesn't get the error when he loads my account so he suggested that it may be location based. I am in lower manhattan and even at my home in NJ I recieve the same error. It is really weird since it wasn't happening recently I have had this phone since it came out so I don't have 3G but everyone in my office environment has the new 3G and they are experiencing the same thing. It may be the AT&T network they possibly ran an update a month or two ago that caused this? Regardless the error is more annoying then anything else since it pops up everytime I first open my email or periodically when I navigate to the phone. We have a veriety of other windows mobile devices and none of them have recieved any problems with Active sync. It is sad since I love the Iphone and and convinced my fellow employees to move over to it now they are saying they want to go back to blackberries and Q's etc... I wonder if having multiple users in a single exchange environment causes confusion. who knows, I called Apples help desk and they told me to download the Configuration utility which I did and then I looked into the logs and all I see is The following error which isn't that informative: She also mentioned that is all they can do for me.

Wed Mar 11 16:42:24 unknown MobileMail[48] <Warning>: ERROR: The connection to the server failed.

Very frustrating since I have spent money for someone to fix it and he couldn't and also I have wasted two days on this project and none of the the other devices have this problem.

We are on exchange 2007 and use an internal certificate all works well Both Active Synch and OWA are in basic Authentification and can be accessed from outside. Again Email sending and recieving does work its just this crazy anoyine error message that constantly pops up for all my users and me.

APPLE Folks if your seeing alot of these errors you better inform folks your working on it or risk loosing corporate clients as they wait for the product to stabalize.

I have the exact same problem. i did software upgrade and all of a sudden exchange wont work for me. is working for other people here at work with their iphones on the same new version of software. here are the associated logs from the iphone:

Fri Mar 20 10:48:14 unknown dataaccessd[361] <Warning>: EAS|EAS Protocol Manager set to ASProtocolUnknown
Fri Mar 20 10:48:14 unknown dataaccessd[361] <Warning>: EAS|ASFolderHierarchy couldn't open file for deletion /var/mobile/Library/DataAccess/ASFolders-E089A26B-773C-48A8-A87F-F09AF17FA15F No such file or directory
Fri Mar 20 10:48:15 unknown Preferences[522] <Warning>: DA|We were told to reload our accounts, but we're already in the middle of saving them out. We were here first, so we're going to save the accounts anyway. Tough cookies.
Fri Mar 20 10:48:15 unknown MobileMail[56] <Warning>: DA|tearDown to be implemented by subclass
Fri Mar 20 10:48:15 unknown MobileMail[56] <Warning>: EAS|EAS Protocol Manager set to ASProtocolUnknown
Fri Mar 20 10:48:15 unknown dataaccessd[361] <Warning>: DA|No more DA accounts, will shutdown in 30 seconds if none are created
Fri Mar 20 10:48:15 unknown dataaccessd[361] <Warning>: EAS|EAS Protocol Manager set to ASProtocolUnknown
Fri Mar 20 10:48:16 unknown Preferences[522] <Warning>: DA|tearDown to be implemented by subclass
Fri Mar 20 10:48:16 unknown MobileMail[56] <Warning>: DA|tearDown to be implemented by subclass
Fri Mar 20 10:48:16 unknown Preferences[522] <Warning>: EAS|EAS Protocol Manager set to ASProtocolUnknown
Fri Mar 20 10:48:16 unknown MobileMail[56] <Warning>: EAS|EAS Protocol Manager set to ASProtocolUnknown
Fri Mar 20 10:48:16 unknown dataaccessd[361] <Warning>: DA|No more DA accounts, will shutdown in 30 seconds if none are created


And when i go into settings for the exchange account:

Fri Mar 20 10:47:36 unknown Preferences[522] <Warning>: Loaded bundle /System/Library/ManagedConfigurationBundles/MCEASConfigurationBundle.bundle MCEASAccountPayloadHandler {
"com.apple.eas.account" = MCEASAccountPayloadHandler;
}

And when i turn the account off (turn off mail,calendars/contacts)

Fri Mar 20 10:48:14 unknown dataaccessd[361] <Warning>: EAS|EAS Protocol Manager set to ASProtocolUnknown
Fri Mar 20 10:48:14 unknown dataaccessd[361] <Warning>: EAS|ASFolderHierarchy couldn't open file for deletion /var/mobile/Library/DataAccess/ASFolders-E089A26B-773C-48A8-A87F-F09AF17FA15F No such file or directory
Fri Mar 20 10:48:15 unknown Preferences[522] <Warning>: DA|We were told to reload our accounts, but we're already in the middle of saving them out. We were here first, so we're going to save the accounts anyway. Tough cookies.
Fri Mar 20 10:48:15 unknown MobileMail[56] <Warning>: DA|tearDown to be implemented by subclass
Fri Mar 20 10:48:15 unknown MobileMail[56] <Warning>: EAS|EAS Protocol Manager set to ASProtocolUnknown
Fri Mar 20 10:48:15 unknown dataaccessd[361] <Warning>: DA|No more DA accounts, will shutdown in 30 seconds if none are created
Fri Mar 20 10:48:15 unknown dataaccessd[361] <Warning>: EAS|EAS Protocol Manager set to ASProtocolUnknown
Fri Mar 20 10:48:16 unknown Preferences[522] <Warning>: DA|tearDown to be implemented by subclass
Fri Mar 20 10:48:16 unknown MobileMail[56] <Warning>: DA|tearDown to be implemented by subclass
Fri Mar 20 10:48:16 unknown Preferences[522] <Warning>: EAS|EAS Protocol Manager set to ASProtocolUnknown
Fri Mar 20 10:48:16 unknown MobileMail[56] <Warning>: EAS|EAS Protocol Manager set to ASProtocolUnknown
Fri Mar 20 10:48:16 unknown dataaccessd[361] <Warning>: DA|No more DA accounts, will shutdown in 30 seconds if none are created

I started getting this error message about a week ago. I'm not computer savvy AT ALL so i have no idea what the above posts were telling me to do as far as fixing the issue. My company recently switched to a more secure https:// prefix and since then, i am not able to get exchange company email. i trouble shooted with our helpdesk and no luck. was on the phone with Apple, and the GENIUS confirmed that exchange is not the issue. DUH ITS NOT. it worked fine for months. And the point is not that it SHOULD be working, the point is that IT DOESNT WORK- so fix it! Anyway, after fooling around for hours, nothing. i switched it back to the old server name and enabled the SSL which should have made it work (since other iphone users just enabled the SSL and had their devices working fine), but still, i had nothing. as soon as i left my company's wireless signal, I got company email! the next day, i joined the wireless network and again got the 'connection to server fail' msg. then i disabled wireless, went 3g, and it worked. i deleted the wifi and rejoined the network, and still nothing. I disabled wireless and stood on 3g, and it works! I'm still not happy cause this makes no sense to anyone and allllll i want/ need is to get office email! At my home wireless network, i am able to receive the emails. and when i trouble shooted with Apple's test info and server it worked with their info! but never with mine 😟

I already had SP2 installed and was still having problems getting connected. The Microsoft article mentioned above worked for me (Microsoft KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=817379)

Sunshiine537, in order for you to be able to access your Exchange server via a public IP address (which is what you are doing when you use OWA/OMA/Exchange Active Sync) from your internal network, you have to configure a loop back rule on your firewall. When you connect to your company's Wi-Fi with your iPhone, you receive an internal IP address. By default, most firewalls will not route traffic out to the WAN from the LAN if the destination IP address is the same IP address of your WAN port. You can test this by trying to access Outlook Web Access (if your company uses it) from your office PC.

In your post you never mentioned if you tried this at home on your home Wi-Fi or not. It should work with no problem at home.

I had a situation in the organization that i work for when we tried to start integrating iPhones into the network where ActiveSync on our 2003 Exchange Server running on Windows Server 2003 OS would not work. I was getting everything from the connection to the server failed to where it would not accept our passwords. I did the following to clear up our issues:

1) installed RPC over HTTP
2) Allowed Windows Integrated Authentication on Exchange Virtual Directories (IIS)
3) Set Exchange OWA virtual directory ASP version to version 1 (OWA had defaulted to a version that was incompatible)
4) Restarted Server

I hope this may help clear up some issues for people that may be having the same issues I experienced.

Hi there,
may I ask how / where you 'set the ASP to 'version 1'? You mean the default ISP in the virtual directory?
RPC over HTTP shouldn't have any relevance with OMA, so I am latching on to the other 2 possibilites 🙂

thx
d

Guys, I had this typical problem of suddenly getting an error of server connection failure on my MS Exchange account. Initially was puzzled but soon figured out the problem. Always remember that normally every company has a policy of forcing you to change your passwords every quarter or six months. In your iphone you would have entered a password when you initially set up your account and the phone never asks for a password again whenever you access the mail. Overtime you tend to forget that. Now after a certain period (say six months in my case) I change my password and suddenly you will see an error message on your phone which will surprise you to such an extent that instead of just going into the setting and changing the password in the phone you will try all sorts of system flushing and what not. The simple answer to this error is "MAKE SURE THE PASSWORD IN YOUR IPHONE IS CURRENT".

I did that ... but I still have the exact same problem.

I experienced this problem last week, and I just resolved it thanks to this board. User bababadam's advice was very good; I had previously soft-shut down, hard-shut down, deleted files, and even reset my iPhone 3G to no avail. After reading bababadam's post I went into mail, contacts, calendar settings (for the 20th time) and tapped on my email account, then tapped "advanced". In Incoming Settings, tap "authentication" and tap "password". It had been set on MD5 Challenge-Response, not sure why/how that happened. Anyway, as of this word I have 50 emails on my iPhone from last week I get to go in and delete.

Similar problems here.
I have several users on the exchange server using the iphone but there is 1 mailbox that it does not work for. 1 mailbox only where I don't get email, calendar or contacts. Any advice?

forget all the nonsense about changing Exchange Server!
here's a simple solution that worked for me as a charm:

1) Delete the account on the mobile device.
2) Move most of the inbox out to a PST.
3) Recreate the exchange account on the mobile device and then it will start behaving itself.

Had exactly this same problem with a user today. There's a variation on this fix that's easier though. The user in question had 1000+ emails in his inbox. So we just created a dummy folder in his Exchange mailbox, moved the bulk of his emails to the dummy folder, and he was able to get to his inbox. He will either have to clean up those old emails, or just do without that dummy folder on his iPhone. There was no need to delete the account on the iPhone, either.

Hi All,
I think there are a number of possible issues and there seem to be a bug in the iPhone 3G where it may work for a while and suddenly stops with the error saying "Connection to the server failed". I have tried all trick and as a last resort I have RESET my NEW iPhone and works fine again. Deleting and readdding the account did not fix the problem, I actually had to reset completely.
Regards,
Tom

Quick Question then,

my Server that hosts exchange is world wide for some reason so there local domain is XXX.co.uk... Now the reverse dns to mail.xxxx.co.uk just hits there website... the only way i can connect to owa/oma is by writing mail.xxx.co.uk\oma

I am having problems setting up the iphone to look at the oma... does the software allow the iphone to look at the address mail.xxx.co.uk\oma or is it not able to... as if it isn't able to do so then we have a major problem.

i can send email fine with a few errors but funny enough it does actually authenticate the account (if i write the domain password wrong it will ask me for another password) if it is working fine im not sure why i cant actually sync with the server then, all the set up's have been done correctly, using SP2 exchange etc

Just can't see it and thats the only thing i can think of if its something to do with the server been a public